Angler X Lays the Ground work for a good Spring:It all started on Easter Sunday when Angler X eschewed all day family gatherings and went to fish what is traditionally thought to be one of our most lame steelhead river in NEW, for the sake of anonymity I shall call it the Kewanee River. Well X went out and the river was flowing at about 6 times normal, so he threw a big tip and a heavy fly on to the rig. He fished what under these high water conditions can only be called a run and ended up landing a fat, fresh in buck right around 10lbs
Doing the “Nasty”:
I mean the Nestucca, you frick’n pervs. Some locals call this small river on Oregon’s central coast the “nasty”. I four days of fishing Rusty and I covered a lot of ground, going from the Sandy to the Nestucca, and on to the Wilson, Trask, and the Little Nehalem. In retrospect we should have stopped at the Nestucca, once we found it’s secrets unveiled to us.
Rusty and I started our trip fishing the Sandy River. We rolled tent camp and Fished the runs around Oxbow, but we just weren't feeling it, even though all the talk was that the river was fishing. So we called up Kaufman's to see where the run was hot. Dude there turned us towards a river called the Nestucca, said he had just had some great fishing there and, since we were up for adventure, we headed to the coast.
On the first afternoon, stumbled around looking for good water, and we eventually found it, and on our second run I got a tug. On our third run I hooked steel and it broke free. Then it was dark so we headed for Pacific City and got a motel in town. Great town with one of the coolest rock island right off the coast, called the haystack.
Our second day on the Nestucca went real cool.
We drove from Pacific City to the run I hooked up on the evening before on some increasingly snow covered roads and ours were the only tracks. Rusty led the way and half way through the run he hooked and landed a solid wild hen.We then fished a few other runs, aand next we headed over to the Wilson and the Trask. Both those rivers had so many private property signs it seemed impossible to get on decent water with out a raft, so we hit a run on each and head back to the Nestucca.
We hit some real small spots, 10-20 cast runs. I got a reel zipping grab on one but no fish. Rusty and I headed back to the run where he got his fish that morning, I led this time. I worked through the run and when I got to the spot where rusty hooked up I got a grab and again no fish. Rusty followed me through and picked up the fish 20+" wild buck. I had been using Gami B10S size 6 hooks on all but the fish that broke me off, so I switched to dropshot no.2 hooks.
The fish seemed to be holding in pretty slow water, so we headed for a run below an old defunct bridge, that had a heavy head and a good sized creek dumping in on the wadable bank the other bank was an unfishable sheer cliff. I was able to pick up a decent sized hatchery fish, the hook worked out. That was it for the day and another night in Pacific City.
The next day we hit the Nestucca early. No fish on Rusty's hot run, which we called "Red Hook". I did get to watch a large, 15-20#, beat up buck partol up and down the run several times. He stay close to shore in shallow water to he was easy to see with battle scars and all.
We hit another favorite run to no avail, then we hit the short runs we check out the day before and again I got a solid grab and no fish, I checked the hook and, guess what, B10S. Then we went back to the run where I got the grab on day 1. Iworked the same far trench as before and fish on, drop shot awesome. then, fish off.
From here we headed up the coast to check out the the Little Nehalem River, it was a bust. So we set up camp at Nehalem Bay State park and we called it a trip. Well, we got nine grabs in less than two full days of fishing, not bad.
Thanks to Rusty for taking the pictures.
