Guerilla Fly-Rod Tactics - Michael Gorman

You may disagree with some of my aggressive strategies in a competitive steelhead environment. And, yes, if you are a ma­ture adult, you may be inclined to groan and roll your eyes oc­casionally as you course through these pages. Irreverent and offensive attempts at humor are in the mix, too. In addition to hardcore information about finding and catching steelhead, the text is replete with my editorial comments, and not only about steelhead fishing. If you decide to proceed, you have been warned! My conscience is clear.

My Story

It took me seven years of dogged persistence to catch my first steelhead. It was another three years before I finally landed one on a fly rod. In order to protect my credibility as an "expert" angler and guide, I usually don't reveal this to my clients until they have actually caught a few steelhead with me. In a good year, my guests will combine to land more than 5 00 steelhead. In fact, I have had scores of clients who landed steelhead on their very first day of fishing for them. So, I guess I've learned a few things over time, mostly by the hard, long route. Learn from my mistakes. My initial steelhead strategy was a losing one: learn it all by yourself through trial and error. My observations over more than thirty years of pursuing steel­head indicate that this is a very popular path for many begin­ners, vainly hoping a steelhead will have a Seizure of Silliness and bite their hook. I call this The Edison Strategy.

When I was a kid, my local library had a single book on steelhead fishing and it was filled, apparently, with sleeping gas. Every time I opened it, the book put me to sleep. Video­tape technology was many years into the future, and if sports­men shows existed where knowledgeable anglers shared their fishing secrets, I did not know about them. My local sporting goods store owner/ clerk/fisherman was on the other side of useless. And, unfortunately, I had no steelheading veterans in my circle of fishing companions. We all fished trout. Thus, it was trial & error for seven long years.

If you are persistent enough in the trials and errors of The Edison Strategy, you-like me-will eventually discover all the flies that don't catch fish, all the angling methods that don't appeal to them, and all the fishing holes on the river that don't hold compliant steelhead. Once all these are discovered, what remains are enticing flies, effective methods, and wor­thy fishing holes. There is a silver lining until you get there. In seven years, my casting technique became excellent because no steelhead ever interfered with my casting practice.

Thomas Edison made famous the strategy that I adopted. He was searching for an appropriate filament for the incandescent light bulb. He tried more than a thousand (!) different materials until he tried a strand of carbonized cotton, which did an adequate job. This discovery took him years. Before the discovery, when a friend remarked that he continued to fail, Edison point­ed out that, on the contrary, he had learned more than a thou­sand materials that didn't work. So, in essence, he could scratch these off his lengthy list. Lemons into lemonade. Similarly it took me most of a decade to discover my "carbonized cotton".

I chose the trial & error tactic for a variety of reasons, none of them very good. These included money (lack thereof), igno­rance, stubbornness, naivete, underestimating my quarry, and an overestimation of myself. Because of the frustration and wasted time inherent in this game plan, I don't recommend the strategy. This book will shave years off your learning curve if you are a struggling beginner. Even if you are a steelhead veteran who wants to get better at locating and catching more of these fish on a fly, I'm confident you will glean some strate­gies that will add to your success.

I've come a Iong way since my first attempts to catch a steelhead. For more than three decades, I have guided Oregon rivers for these intriguing fish, logging more than 120 days on steelhead rivers in a typical year. On top of this, I have taught fly-fishing and steelhead fishing credit classes at Oregon State University in Corvallis since the late 1980's, and continue to do so as of this writing.

Important fly-fishing lessons illustrated by real-life steel­head stories are a large part of what you will read in every chap­ter. Just like every question my students and clients throw at me about "Why do you do it this way?" or "Why is that small detail so important to success?" I attempt to back up my an­swer with an experience I've lived or witnessed. There is little consensus among steelhead experts about which flies, meth­ods, equipment, knots, wind direction, moon phase, and hat color are best for catching steelhead. This is part of the fun. I have some strong opinions born of experience, but I am open to discovery, re-evaluation and change. And, if I ever write a revised edition of this book, I will change, no doubt, a few of these opinions as the steelhead teach me more. However, until then, I'm giving you what I've gathered and processed in pur­suing steelhead, trying to trick them into biting my hook. 

This Book 

I have tried to create a bare-knuckles field manual. It takes you out of the steelhead fishing schoolhouse and throws you into the foxhole. This book is intentionally short on inconsequen­tial fluff and high on effective planning and preparation. It's lacking in steelhead fly-fishing history, devoid of discussion about fly-fishing pioneers and current "masters", and almost completely wanting in eloquent wet flies and their compli­cated designs. You won't find instructions about how to cast 200 feet. Others have presented all these much better than I could. My intent is not to cover well-traveled ground in writ­ing about fly-rod steelheading. My intent is to give you a map, a canteen, a shovel, a "weapon", and a good plan to accomplish the mission-catching a steelhead on a fly rod.

Sometimes the topics discussed herein aren't pretty, artful, or genteel. Not all anglers and river users you will encounter while fishing are generous and courteous. The vast majority of quality public waters are overcrowded and the anglers there fiercely competitive. It doesn't matter how good your flies are and how far you can cast a beautiful tight loop if you can't find a place to fish, or you are relegated to water that has already been pounded today by three other anglers as skilled as you. I address these very significant issues.

This book will not be your Grandpa's primer on fly-fishing for steelhead on the uncrowded streams of the Olden Days. The successful steelhead fly-fisher of the 21st century has to have a comprehensive plan, a well-thought-out strategy when he or she goes fishing. It's challenging enough to locate, ap­proach, and coax a steelhead without much appetite to bite your fly. However, add to this numerous other anglers compet­ing with you for that very same fish, and the difficulty of the challenge increases exponentially.

Make no mistake, I will be laying out in the pages that fol­low effective flies, methods, and equipment that have produced thousands of steelhead I've caught or netted for my guests. (And, thousands is not an exaggeration in a span of more than thirty years.) In addition to the 'where' and 'how', and 'with what', I'll help you lay out a game plan to enhance your odds and enjoyment of catching a steelhead on a fly rod, just like a skilled, intelligent guerilla on an important mission.

My Perspectives

Much of what I write is from a dual perspective: I am both a fly-fisherman and a fly-fishing guide. Even when guiding, I am fishing ... through my clients. I fish in these situations by proxy. When you think about it, the challenge of a good guide is to be able to fish through his guests. I must effectively convey to the angler how to cast accurately, achieve the proper presentation of the fly, detect the strike, set the hook, play the steelhead and successfully slide it into the net or onto the beach. As I teach the details of effective steelhead fly-fishing to others, it reinforces the importance of such attention to de­tails for my own fishing. If I really want to learn something well, I try to teach it successfully to others. So, when I relate many stories in this book as I wear my "guide hat", do not let that cause you to lose sight of learning a valuable fishing lesson, even though you are probably not a guide. It's irrelevant. And, since most steelhead fly-anglers do not fish from a boat, but on foot, do not lose sight of my lesson for you just because many of my stories take place when my guests and I are in a boat. For my personal fishing, I am usually on foot. Solitude in my personal fishing is important. Lo­cations that are inaccessible to boats are my preference. Boat traffic can greatly diminish my enjoyment (and success) when I personally hunt steelhead. I am, also, willing to blaze a trail where there is no trail, in order to separate myself from other bank anglers. I try to avoid the easily ­accessed walk-in locations.

I truly think I can improve the ease of understanding essential details critical to locating and catching steel­head. So, approach this as a fun-to-read technical manual. This book aims to be more entertaining and humorous (I hope) than any other book on the subject of steelheading with a fly, or any other angling method for that matter. I choose to take a more aggressive, opinionated writing slant toward the pursuit of the most worthy fish that inhabits freshwater. If you are open to such an approach for chasing the West's greatest game fish, then it is time to put on the spurs, saddle up, "cowboy up", and ride with me in pursuit of steelhead for the next 18 chapters. 

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