#TBT to 1996: Steelhead on the Sol Duc

17-pound steelhead on the Sol Duc River

If memory serves, this was back in March of 1996. I had traveled from Walla Walla to Seattle to meet my parents who were coming from the San Francisco Bay Area. Together we went in a rental car to the Olympic Peninsula, what was for us a wild and woolly part of the country patched with clear cuts and old growth forests, big rivers green with glacial till layered with large rocks and stones and moss draping off trees.

We were with a guide we had met while fishing in Alaska and had fished for 2 days completely skunked. Though he was a great guide who knew the rivers well and tied creative flies for a range of conditions, steelhead fishing is like that. Cold, wet and a very low strike per cast ratio.

Late in the afternoon on the last day of our float down the Sol Duc River I casted near a big rock and a powerful undercurrent not far from a bridge that Highway 101 goes over. The same 101 that speeds through the Silicon Valley of the Bay Area where I am from. This other version of 101, going over the Sol Duc, not far from the Forks of Twilight fame and western red cedars as thick as suburban houses was a lot different. Logging trucks rumbled by.

I felt a large tug. Oh the jolt of adrenaline! The reel on my rod was spinning so fast I thought I saw smoke come off it. I held on for dear life. Our guide edged his MacKenzie River boat to shore. I stepped out of the boat and worked the fish which had jumped several times doing cartwheels but wasn't the most acrobatic fish I've ever caught. After a while he slowed down and we netted him by the side of the river. It was probably the biggest smile we'd seen from our guide and probably the first he'd shown in a long time. You can see him beaming in the picture.

A 17-pound buck. The moment cemented in history was a turning point. A few years later, my parents retired and moved out to Port Angeles, where they have lived for almost 15 years. I'm not too far away in Bellingham, which is less than 100 miles away by how the crow flies but is easily 4 hours by car. It takes so long because of the crazy topography and the necessity of getting a ferry to the Peninsula. It's a strange and beautiful part of the world. Rugged, green and wet. The fish was almost a moment that retired me from fishing. How can you beat a 17-pound steelhead on a fly rod?