I finally made it out for some spring steelhead fishing. My buddy, who will remain nameless to protect his fishing credibility, asked me to go try some spring steelhead fishing with him near Riggins. For those of you who know me, I am "Steelhead Challenged." I can catch salmon better than most, but steelhead just give me fits. I have made quite a few trips and just never can put it all together. I was determined that this would be my trip.

We headed out Saturday morning in hopes of putting the boat in near daylight. I have never run the main Salmon River by the "park hole," and was a bit nervous. He was new to this stretch too.We were met with some fairly dirty water because of the warm temperatures and moisture we've gotten, but the levels looked good. The boat went in and we were off.

I will not bore you with the details, but let's just say the fishing was NOT red hot. We ended up fishing there most of Saturday, before making a trip to check out the Little Salmon, which was like chocolate milk. Sunday again brought us to the main Salmon. We fished until about noon and decided to call it quits.

On the way home, we decided to give Brownlee a try. We were there — so why not. We only had steelhead equipment, but we made do. All in all, I was not skunked, but I could not say the same for my buddy. I caught four steelhead and a catfish. The steelhead were all natives and were released.

It was a great trip. We got to try some new things and learned a bunch about early spring fishing. The weather turned out OK which is a hard thing to find this time of year. Anytime you can get out of town to do some early spring fishing and not get drenched or frozen, is a success. Hopefully I will be invited next time.