Hot Week on Steelhead Alley

Every spring on Steelhead Alley there is at least one hot week. A week where each riffle and run seems full of steelhead either making their way up from or back to Lake Erie. A week when aggressive males and hungry drop-back females will crash through a riffle to catch up to a swung minnow fly.

This is that week.

This week the steelies carry every color in the rainbow, and a few more, on their bodies. The old fish are black. The
fresh fish chrome silver. Green backs, pink sides, red gills, yellow eyes and white mouths.

This week pods of new fish enter a run every 15 minutes or so. Anglers laugh with joy and give thanks with each new arrival.

This week the fish, powered by warm water temps, leap from the river, sending thousands of tiny water drops into the air. The fish make reel drags sing and 10 foot rods bend into giant capital "Cs."

This week the catching is almost too easy. This week the arm will tire before the sun goes down.

This week makes one almost forget about the frozen feet, iced eyelets and fishless days of December; let alone the iced over rivers of January and February.

This week the wild ramps cover the forest floor. The buds on the trees are beginning to pop. The geese are more aggressive than the steelhead. And the mallards are paired up.

This week likely won't last a full week. But it is hot week. Fish on.