A couple of weeks ago I had the pleasure of flying to Oregon for two days of steelhead fishing on the Siletz River. Fishing on the west coast is something I have wanted to do for a long time so when a friend called and asked me to go I had to jump on the offer. He told me we would be fishing with an awesome guide and he wasn’t lying. Originally I was going to write a story about my trip. As I tried to write it I realized I needed it to be two parts. Part one a review of our guide. Part two, which will come at a later date, the entire story of the trip. Our guide was Nolan Davis who owns and operates Northwest Connection Sportfishing.Day one we had high but fishable beautiful green water. The night before Nolan had told us the water was dropping but still on the high side but would have great color. We arrived at the boat launch to see he was spot on. We rigged our rods and launched the boat. As soon as we left the launch Nolan was telling us where to cast and how to run our drifts. We weren’t on the water 20 minutes and Craig was hooked up with a gorgeous hatchery fish which ended up in the net.As we drifted down stream and motored around some of the pools Nolan would tell us to cast to this spot, move the float over to this spot, reel in and recast. The entire time he is talking about slots, buckets, and troughs. I am listening and doing my best to hit the spots he is calling out. It wasn’t long before I was hooked up too but the whole time I am thinking what is this guy talking about? I can’t see any structure everything looks the same in this water. I kept hooking fish though and ended up hooking 6 before the day was over with a couple others that I felt just long enough to know it was a fish that made the bobber drop.Nolan is a lot like me in the fact he doesn’t like to fish around other people and boats if he can help it. There were a good number of boats on the river the first day and he did a great job to make sure we didn’t have to fish around many of them. He told us he liked to fish small spots others don’t know or just don’t bother to fish. Again with the water conditions everything looked the same to me. We managed to hook fish in multiple places after others had fished them though. This told me we were doing exactly that, hitting the little overlooked pockets.Day two the water had dropped about a half a foot. What a difference that made for me. Now as Nolan called out the spots I could see them. It was amazing that the day before I was fishing these same spots but couldn’t see them. Nolan knows this river so well he had Craig and I casting to micro spots all based on memory. Day two absolutely proved to me we were with the right guide.There were even more boats on the river the second day as it was at a level more people are comfortable floating it. Nolan knew that would be the case and decided to pull a somewhat secret move of his. I am not going to elaborate on what that was but I will just say we fished the first part of the day in water that no one else had fished yet and the rest of the day behind the fleet of drift boats.We only saw two boats on the river all day. One was a raft we saw at the launch which we motored up past and proceeded to catch a nice wild steelhead out of the hole they had just been fishing and the second was one of Nolan’s friends at the take out. Day 2 Craig and I hooked and landed 7 steelhead. I also caught my first and second cutthroat trout. Craig caught one or two cutthroat as well. Overall it was an awesome day on the river where we didn’t have to fish around other boats. Nolan might have been second guessing his move in the morning but by the end of the day it was very clear he had made the right call.If you want to head to Oregon and fish the Siletz, I highly recommend doing so, get a hold of Nolan Davis with Northwest Connection Sportfishing. His knowledge of the Siletz River and it’s steelhead is second to none. He is by far one of the best guides I have ever fished with. His boat is clean and comfortable. His gear is top notch as he works closely with some great manufactures. I learned a lot in my two days on the river with him and I know you will too.www.nwcfishing.com
Posts Tagged ‘travel’
Northwest Connection – Nolan Davis
Posted in Product Reviews, Reports, tagged driftboat steelhead fishing, guided steelhead fishing siletz river, northwest connection sportfishing, oregon guided steelhead fishing, oregon steelhead fishing, Siletz River, siletz river steelhead fishing, Steelhead, steelhead fishing, travel on February 17, 2020| Leave a Comment »
Why have a “bucket list”? Why Not have a “F it list” ?
Posted in Tips and Tricks, tagged Destination fishing trips, Fly Fishing, Guided fishing trips, travel, Trout Fishing on January 3, 2018| Leave a Comment »
You often here people talk about fishing destinations and how they are “bucket list”. These are places people dream about fishing and hope they will make it too before they die. Many times they plan to go when they retire, when the kids move out of the house, child support payments end, and so on and so on. I have a big problem with this.
First off you don’t know how long you are going to live. You could die tomorrow, year or in 50 years. No one knows how long they will live. If you put a trip on your bucket list and then kick the bucket before you get to go what was the point. No one shows pictures of places people wanted to visit at their funeral. They do however often show pictures of extravagant places people visited while they were alive doing things they loved. Think about when you have seen these pictures. Chances are you thought about how they may not be with us anymore but at least they were able to do things they loved in cool places. This likely brought a bit of a smile or a bit of relief to you during a sad time.
The second problem I have with bucket lists is you don’t know what kind of shape you will be in when your retire or whatever excuse you are using to delay trip of life time happens. You might not be physically able to make the trip or may experience an unexpected financial hardship at a time in your life you aren’t able to make that money back up. So here you sit wishing you had taken the trip when you were younger. Again you never run into an old man in the fly shop talking about the trips he thought about going on. You will often see that old man telling you all about the places he fished when he was younger though. He will smile the entire time too.
This is why I say take that bucket list and turn it into a F it list. Go now while you can. This doesn’t just include fishing trips. This is anything you have wanted to do. Find a way and do it. Don’t have the money? Find it. Sell some stuff you haven’t used and no longer need. Get a side job. Take a loan if you have to. That is as long as it wont take food out of your families mouth that is. Now if you are single and it means box mac and cheese dinners for a few months I say go for it.
Now what I mean by a F it list is take that list of places you want to go and prioritize it. Now figure out a way to check one spot off each year. My personal list has places that are expensive and places that won’t take much money they just require actually going. My plan is to do an expensive one followed by a year or two of less expensive trips so I can recoup from the big trip. This spring I am going to Argentina to fish for Golden Dorado. To be honest I had no idea what a golden dorado was until I heard about this trip. I found out a details from my friend Mark and said F it I want to go and I am going to go. Fly fishing in South America is something I have always wanted to do. I had just planned on going for trout but only because I didn’t know about golden dorado.
I am also going with my family this winter to Mississippi to visit my brother in-law. This will mostly be a family trip but will include fishing for red fish and sea trout. Something I have also always wanted to do. My wife has wanted to go visit her brother for a long time as well so we are saying F it and going this year while we can.
Many of us has places or types of trips we have wanted to take that are close by we just don’t take the time to do it. It is time to change that. Go do what is is you have dreamed about. As my boss always says this isn’t a dress rehearsal, if there is something you want to do you need to do it. So many people die at young age before getting to do the things they dream about. Don’ t let it happen to you. Turn that bucket list into a F it list today.
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