When I blocked out February 24-25 for steelheading in western PA, I was certain that it was a plan that would never see action. The creeks were an impenetrable wall of water in its solid state. Not happening. Then the thaws came. The ice released its lock on the creeks. And suddenly, by golly, we had optimism. This could happen. The trip is on.
Then came the blizzard. I can get pretty motivated when there’s something in the way of something that I want to do, and I figured that if the snow stopped early enough on Monday the 23rd, I could still make the drive and be fishing on Tuesday. However, I didn’t expect over 18″ of heavy, wet snow. But I was snowblowing the driveway at 11am, the snowflakes still flying. My neighbor, who has a plow, usually clears the shared driveway. But as time moved farther past noon, and it still wasn’t cleared, my worst fears became reality. My neighbor was away. If I wanted to fish, I would have to clear about 300 feet of that snow — the last horrible 6 feet, a pudding of heavy-as-wet cement glop, by shovel. Ugh. No way. The trip is off.
But no, dammit, it isn’t. I’m going steelheading tomorrow. So I fired up the blower, steeled my back, and had at it. And that’s how, at 4pm, I found myself heading north on I-91. I had wet roads until Albany, then lake effect snow on and off from Rochester into PA. Safely in bed, I was out like a light at 1:30am.
The silver lining to this tired angler cloud is that you don’t need to start early on a winter’s day, especially if there’s likely to be slush in the water. I was fishing by 10:30am — perfectly civilized — and while slush was a problem, it wasn’t a deal breaker. I got maybe one good drift out of 6 casts. I missed the first bite because he ate where I didn’t expect it. The second miss was a foul. Finally, I was on the board. This fish was the third of the day; I’m particularly captivated by the see-through tail. Already, yesterday’s shoveling horrors seemed worthwhile.By 11:30am, the slush was almost gone, and I was hooking fish in earnest. When I’d left CT, I was at 282 steelhead landed. I was hoping to drive home somewhere in the 290s. But the fish kept coming, and there came a point in the time-space continuum when I dared to think: I could break 300 today. Yes, I think I can. What happened next was a phenomenon that I only recognized several days later: I got into the zone. Nothing else registered — not the cold, not the ice, not my hunger, not the time. I was, as the colloquial expression goes, unconscious. Find fish, cast, mend, drift, adjust and mend, set, fight, land. Geez, the last time I looked at my watch it was 11am. Now, it was after 1pm. 299, baby! Ringo Starr sang, “It don’t come easy,” and he ain’t lying. We found a pod of steelhead in a whitewater plunge and run, including a couple huge dark horse bucks. But they were most uncooperative. So we moved down the run to another short stack of fish, their location belied by dark backs against the light green substrate. First cast. Big upstream mend. Dead drift. Indicator goes under. Sweeping set downstream. Fish on. It was a fine steelhead for number 300, a chunky hen in the 8-10 lb. class. Despite the barely-above-freezing water, she put up a fight worthy of her size. With pink and rose on her flanks and secondary and tertiary rainbow colors on her cheeks, she was an absolutely gorgeous creature. So, yeah. I kissed her. It was a little after 1:30pm.Over my steelheading career, I’ve noticed that the sudden arrival of a cold front has an immediate, negative effect on the bite. Around 2pm, the wind picked up, the water began to stain, and bites became a scarce commodity. We took a lunch break, and headed to a different mark, where the water was the color of tea with a drop or two of milk. We picked several pockets and runs and pools, but found diners in only one of them. I missed the first, landed the second, and called it a day at 305. Not in my wildest dreams did I think this would happen on this trip. Had I been in a different mindset, I would have brought a truly special cigar to celebrate the occasion. Tell you what: what I smoked tasted just damn fine.Madelaine’s is my go-to eatery, and I was ready for a celebratory dinner of their meatloaf and an IPA. What?!? Closed on Tuesdays?!? I ended up at The Barracks, which as you can see looks a little like a disco-casino-local bar mashup. The cheeseburger was excellent. The Yeungling draft most quenching. Yep. I was going to sleep well tonight.
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