Then throughout the day I hear him yell up river, “No stripping.” I tell him I have to strip to re-cast, but he gives me a dubious look.
We pound the first run and another corner-bend the entire afternoon with a few bumps and a few smallish trout. Without the success we’re looking for we’ve changed flies a handful of times that all revolved around the same theme. The rocky banks are littered with Pancora exoskeletons. They are essentially a rounder flatter version of crayfish that spend most of the year with olive coloration, until turning a bright orange in the fall.
Looking down as we walk they scatter ahead of our footsteps and give us confidence we’re on the right track with our Pancora looking patterns. I’ve got an entire box of green and orange I’ve tied over the last several months hoping to have just the right fly for the moment. So far the salt-water crab pattern, the bunny leech with deer-hair collar, or the Pancora Intruder haven’t found a lip to call home.
We work the water till we can’t see our line. We reel up and head for the car with a haze of evening hanging in the western sky. The day’s cast-step-cast with the spey rod felt so much like an OP steelhead trip it wouldn’t really be right to ruin it with a monster fish pic on the camera’s memory card. So like most steelhead trips that swing the fly from one side of the river to the other, we have left the fish in their liquid home to fill our imaginations and keep us coming back again and again for the expected tug. Fortunately I don’t have to wait long, we’ll be back to swing the run for a huge Limay brown in the morning...