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I brought home 4 lbs of beautiful wild steelhead the last time I was in the US. Not a fish of course, but a couple of impressing books.

The mortality rate for a steelhead taken out of the water for 60 seconds or even 10 seconds can have huge implications on a fishes survival.

A very thorough introduction to fishing for steelhead in the great lakes area in the US by renown steelhead guide Matt Supinski. Covering tactics, gear and flies as well as seasons and locations.

A short detour on Prosek before I return to the books at hand.
Prosek is probably best known for these very books, but is an active and widely used and published writer and painter, whose work has appeared in publications such as National Geographic and New York Times. He became a household name in the fly fishing community when Abel started using him as an artist for a range of their fabulous painted reels.

This story is an excerpt from Tom Alkire's latest book, River Stories: Headwaters to the Sea, a full of stories about rivers and most of them are about fishing as well. Sometimes meditative, other times humorous.

Trout beads aren't beads in the traditional fly tying sense but perfect imitations of salmon eggs and deadly efficient for rainbows. And they can be fished on a fly rod.

It is always hard to make a follow up. This one is no different. It has to follow up a several very successful DVDs.

The intro is delicious! Action, pumping hard music, fast cutting, close-ups, underwater footage, comments, introducing the group members and rough effects, just what we are used to from AEG Media. It promises well for the next hour, which is introduced by an older guy saying "We might be the last generation to experience this..."

This is a very personal film, an very different film but also a very good film.
Before I got to like it I had to get to terms with its somewhat odd concept. The main character - basically the only character in the film - is the angler, the photographer, the video guy, the narrator, the interviewer, the person being interviewed - and probably has a few other roles that I didn't notice.

Steelheading weather

Dec Hogan is well known in the fly fishing world as a master of the two-handed fly rod, but until I picked up "A Passion for Steelhead" I did not know much about Dec Hogan the angler. 313 pages later, that surely has changed, almost to the point where I feel the book's title is a bit of an understatement. Anglers worldwide tend to be passionate about their fishing, but I've always had the sense that those who chase steelhead in the Pacific Northwest were a little more hardcore than the rest of us, where the passion occasionally boils over into obsession.

Chuck-n-duck fishing isn't for everyone. Morality aside, it is an effective angling technique, one worth learning if you find occasionally find yourself in a situation where drifting a nymph along the bottom of a distant lie is the difference between catching and casting practice.

One of the most effective methods of drifting a fly through deep pools in Great Lakes steelhead rivers is to use a slinky. You can buy slinkies from a shop, but you will pay a premium. The components are pretty cheap and they are very easy to make at home.

I've read a lot of books where the author seems to be very eager to impress the reader either with his skill, or knowledge, or abilities. You won't get any of that here

About a month ago, a friend and I fished NY's Salmon River and enjoyed a day of continuous action. The pool we were fishing was continuously being refreshed with fish as they moved upriver from the rapids below, their tails spraying water behind them as they swiftly through the currents. As they saying goes, it was a day of tight lines and screaming reels. We left more than satisfied, with sore arms and smiles on our faces.

In Denmark fishing for escaped sea farm rainbows is possible when a cage breaks. The sport is good and you can catch - and kill - several prize size fish in the 50-60 cenimetre or 20-24" range in a day, helping removing them from nature.

These are some pictures from my visit to the North West - Seattle, where I had the pleasure of fishing with some very nice people in the early winter 1995.