The water levels on one of my smaller rivers became perfect for steelheading. During the mornings we loaded up on steel with creek candy beads, spawn and jigs under floats in the deeper holes but during mid day the fish became more active and were chomping at the bit to eat small stone flies and egg patters. Best news from this week is there were no suckers! My larger rivers are coming down from flood levels at a rapid pace and will be fishable next week as long as we don'

The last few days have been nothing short of a waiting game. We received a bunch of rain earlier last week causing all the rivers to flood out. The 17th, the smallest of the rivers I fish became fishable for a whopping one day but there was a nice batch of steelhead that moved in. I spent the first part of the day drifting spawn and creek candy beads. The first fish to strike was a healthy 7-8lb buck steelhead. After loosing a few other fish I finally stuck a chrome dime

While running back from Minnesota I checked the river flows and noticed that they all bumped up to perfect levels. Friday I took a coworkers husband out for steelhead and it didn't take long to tie into my first fish. Since Tony is brand new to steelheading I let him reel it in on my Raven Tackle 14' IM8 rod and Matrix fully ported reel. In the first spot we ended up getting 3 fish and in the second spot Tony finally hooked and landed his own steelhead! Saturday I ran a full

Monday March 7th, my partner and I wheeled it close to 500 miles to Alexandria Minnesota to start pre fishing for the Team Extreme Nationals. We had heard chatter about the tournament possibly being cancelled due to bad ice and a week forecast of 50 degree temps. Tuesday we started on Lake Mary where I found one suspended crappie in 35fow. After a few hours I decided it was time to load the wheeler and check out the south end of the lake. Once we got to the boat launch we ran

During February I ran a contest at The Beef Jerky Outlet Store for one lucky winner to win a half day guide trip for spring steelhead. Out of the over 100 entries Jarred was the lucky winner. He asked if he could bring his buddy with and sure why not. We met up on the root this morning and of course there were two guys in the first spot I wanted to fish with 3 steelhead on the stringer. We hit two other spots before ending up in a spot on the lower section of the river.

Saturday i had the pleasure of running the last ice trip of the year in McKinley Marina. The goal was to get my client on a bunch of steelhead but the brown trout had other ideas. I ran every close to every rod in the top 6' of water with a mix of shiners and spawn sacs on. it didn't take long after setting up for the first automatic fisherman to pop off with a very nice 12lb brown. While my client was fighting that one, I looked up and a second automatic was on the verge

This week has just been shy of outstanding! Despite a few days of high water on one river, low water on another and heavy foot pressure, it didn't stop the steelhead from biting. With my home river getting low and a hair clear, Creek Candy Beads were the trick the past two days, especially in the upper sections. Otherwise pink spawn sacs have done very well. I'm going to soak up more steelhead the rest of this week before the long truck to Alexandria Minnesota monday to pre f