The Elusive Deschutes Steelhead

I have never caught a steelhead before. My trip last weekend led me to the lower Deschutes River in Oregon around the town of Maupin. Maupin is a cozy little town with a few fly shops, restaurants, motels, an eight man football team and not a few steelhead fishermen. Luckily when we arrived at the river after our 1 1/2 hour drive from Gresham at 7:00 AM we found relatively few people on the river and some willing trout on our nymph rigs. I caught 4 of the 5 first fish of the day between the three of us, in the first 1/2 hour and then only two others the rest of the day. Nate got into 3 really nice trout in a row 18, 17 and 16 inches in that order and fat. The fishing slowed considerably by 10:00 and we were working for only the occasional hit the rest of the day. Nate and I fished a section about 1 1/2 miles downstream from where John was and we had no luck. We wandered around for a while and then decided to go find John. When we found him he immediately had a story about a steelhead that he had just hooked but had released early. We thought, "right". Not 30 seconds later John was into a decent steelhead and we were feeling more than a little sheepish. John played and landed the 7 pound steelhead like a pro on a 4 weight rod. That was, in fact, my first and only look at a real steelhead. Oh well, maybe next time, it was still a great time.