Dave Graybill: The Fishin' Magician

I finally got up to Bridgeport to do some steelhead fishing.

This is my wife’s favorite place to fish for steelhead and once again she caught the first fish of the day.

I couldn’t get a bite in the first drift so she suggested that we try near the bridge. It turned out to be a great idea. We go two fish here and a nice triploid that is legal to keep this season.

One of the fish was a 31-inch hatchery fish. We gave the Blow Hole a couple of passes but it only produced another triploid.

We bounced back up stream to the hole where we started and Eileen got a good jumper on her jig. On the next drift I hooked the hottest steelhead I have had on my line in a long time.

The fish took a hundred-foot run, jumped, and then turned to bank and almost beached itself. It ran back out into the river took a second a second jump and I thought I’d lost it.

Turned out it stayed on the line until I had it next to the boat and then took a dive and broke off. Whew. What a fight! We ended up with three keepers, one wild that we released and three nice triploids.