Okay, I am sore puppy. Hiking nearly 7 miles in 2 days to catch one steelhead was a bummer in some ways but really cool in others.

Now that I have a bit more time I may as well post. The month of December has seen little rain in Western Washington. After 4 years of complaining about too much rain here, this year there isn't enough.

With the low water, i had to go to a major river system to see if I couldn't get my steelhead fix in for the day. I fished a large glacial river in Western Washington and managed a 6 pound hatchery steelhead. It was nice in several ways. First it was my first fish out of this particular river. and second, it was the first steelhead I caught on a drift rig. That's basically a corky and weight cast into the main river and bounced along the bottom from shore. Third, it was my first ever steelhead I caught on sandshrimp with the added bonus that it was sandshrimp I dug myself.

I wish someone would sell them around here. The closes place I know of is in the town of Montesano which is 45 minutes in the wrong direction. Knowing that steelhead (and salmon too) love them, I built my own sandshrimp gun, and here is picture of what they look like. The single sand shrimp I think is a female. the males have one monster claw on them. Pretty cool stuff.

Spent close to an hour getting 3 dozen of them today but the tides weren't right. You can by them for something like 3 dollars a dozen so I am not sure its worth the effort. But if you can't buy them, ya gotta dig them! I know for the locals, this is nothing new. but for us Alaskans, it's definitely different. I should take a few dozen or so back to Alaska during the salmon season and see if they wouldn't work. hmmmm....