Mike's December Steelhead

Who would of ever thought that I'd be out steelheading on December 30th here along Ontario's west coast. The weather just hung on for us this past fall and I had a great month in December fishing for these chrome bullets. With my venison in the freezer and a few "free" days between Christmas and New Year, I found myself looking for some new action and I thought I'd do some late season back country scouting on one of my favorite late season rivers. I had just recently aquired a new access point which now allowed me to get backdeep into this river valley which otherwise would take hours of hiking. After only a 20 minute hike, I found myself at streamside attaching a small nymph to the end of my line and scouting the waters flow for where I thought one of these steelhead may lie. It wasn't long (actually only 10 mins), before I had a fresh steelie jumping in front of me on the end of my line and it was only seconds before she broke my 4x tippet and returned to her lay behind the very rock I had found her. A couple corners later and a few more pools found me tangling with the fish pictured above. After a quick shot with this chromer beside my "weapon of choice" and a picture by a friendly fellow fisherman she returned to the cold December water to finish the ritual she started. Isn't nature great!!!

Look for more of Pro-Staff Mike Verhoef's flyfishing adventures on www.canadianoutfitter.tv