I usually don't fish the beaver ponds too much. I save them for special occasions when I need a mental detox. Just a day to go catch alot of easy fish.  Beautiful, but not so smart ,fish.  
 Today was one of those days.  Evening is usually best because it's cool, and you won't get soaked from the morning dew that's accumulated on every blade of head-high grass you often have to walk through. 
 I pop a couple of allergy pills (darned hay fever!) grab my 3 weight, a small fly box, hemostats and I'm out the door.  My target pond is a sweet little one full of 8" cutties.  I did well there last year, and I expect to do well there today. 
 I park at the logging road that leads to the stream the pond is on, and to my horror this is what I see...... 

The logging compay who owns the land didn't appreciate the beaver's work as much as I did, and removed the dam.  The grassy little creek bottom you see was all a very nice little pond.  But that's just the way things go in the Northwest industrial forests.  Timber production is number one, and protecting the culvert and road takes priority over fishing.  But, the good thing is that the beavers will be back.  This is the "beaver state" and the creek is good habitat.  I'm bummed as I walk back to the car, but these beauties cheer me up......

A quarter mile away in another drainage, I know of another beaver pond.  (one of the benefits of being a fur trapper).  This one is harder to get to, and the beavers won't be bothering anybody there.  The pond is still intact, but it is a shallow basin, and just getting to the waters edge is a challenge. The rod is strung , the line keeps grabbing foilage as I wrestle my way through it.  I clip my fly and reel all of my line onto the spool, this makes travel much eaiser.  My rod hangs up on an alder, and I look back to see what it's caught on.   As if to add insult to injury, I notice my tip section of rod missing!  Gone.....  Crap.  It's like finding a needle in a hay stack.  How far back did I lose it?  I slowly and carefully start retracing my steps, I see a glint of silver in the trailside grass and amazingly enough, find the tip!   Feeling relief, I trudge on.  Ducking through stinging nettles, I finally see the reflection of water.  The pond is there.  I make my way to the dam and can see steady rises coming from the center of the pond.  But there is a problem.  There is no where to fish from.  The entire dam and shore is lined with line entangling alders. 

 I'd have better luck trying to cast through my screen door at home.  Dissapointed, I half heartedly flipped my elk hair caddis out as far as I could.  It was like bobber fishing with bait.  Just watching the little tan fly float there motionless.  I gave it a little twitch just to feel like I was doing something, but it didn't matter.  Fish were rising steadily in the middle of the pond.  All I could do was watch, which I did for a while, then retreated.
 There wasn't much daylight left.  But, I did know of one last little gem a few miles away.  It was pretty small, but should hold fish.  I drove that direction not expecting much, after all that had happened already.  
  I grabbed the little three weight and started ducking my way through the Douglas fir regrowth.  I could soon hear the gurgle of the small brook.  The dam was intact, and the beavers had been busy.  They had raised the pond water level a solid foot from last year, adding a bunch of new trout habitat.  I flipped my little partridge and orange soft hackle into the tannic stained water, and instantly I saw a silver flash slashing towards the fly.  The little cuttie cartwheeled out of the water and did his best to dislodge the little iron. 

His throat slashes and fins beamed scarlet in the fading daylight.  He wasn't a big one, but they usually never are. 

Its wasn't the metal detox, lots of easy fish kind of day that I had hoped for.  Just the chance to see one of these little native cutthroats was enough.  It's funny how a single fish can change a man's outlook, but that's what they do.... One was enough.

Summer is quickly approaching.  (Well, not that quickly here in the Northwest). My yard needs mowing weekly (yuk), the days are getting longer, and the rivers are filling with fresh summer steelhead.   
 For steelheaders, its also that time of year to put the sink tips away.  Having been a die hard winter steelhead fly fisherman for years, putting the sink tips away has been a hard thing to do.  Still is.  I put them away, but not TOO far away.  
 This year I've got myself a dedicated dry line rod.  There's no sense in waving around a big clunky stick if you don't have to dredge up yards of T-17 all day long.  The new rod is a nice, light 12 1/2 footer  More of a "wand" in my eyes than a rod.  It makes casting the dry line effortless (and that's an important thing in my mind).  
 The "effortless" cast thing is important for me if I'm going to dedicate my fishing time to the dry line.  If I'm fishing the dry line, I'm usually fishing a dry fly (skater), which is great visual stimulation. If you are going to be doing something unproductively for long periods of time, you had better enjoy it (otherwise it's too easy to quit and try something else) I became hooked on dry fly steelhead fishing last fall.  It's an experience I have a hard time topping in the outdoors.  It's worth doing again, and again, and........  again.    

Of course, if you are going to undertake something like dry line, dry fly steelheading, it's nice to get a little pep talk.  For me, that pep talk comes from Mr. McMillan.  The book "Dry line steelhead" is the bible on the subject as far as I'm concerned.  (hopefully we will have some used copies for sale soon)  Armed with loads of new confidence, it's time to hit the river.

The river for me was a large Willamette Valley river with a good run of summer steelhead.   The fly of choice was my purple polar bear muddler, riffle hitched.  A nasy bunch of blow down and some sketchy braided channels would keep the boats away.  There were no footprints ahead of me in the trail.  Perfect.  Undisturbed fish, overcast sky, first water..... just what I wanted.  I made my way to the top of the run.  I lengthen my casts out until it was time to start stepping through the run.  I watch my little muddler plow its furrow across the surface faithfully.  The rod throws the line with ease, cast after cast.  A spunky native cutthroat comes to hand.  A great icebreaker and mental check.  I didn't react with a jerk, so I'll be ready for Mr. Big.   Another cutthroat falls for the mudder, not what I'm looking for, but a good sign. 
  I near the slower, deeper mid section of the run.  It only looks like borderline "steelhead" water, so I quicken my pace.  My line hangs down. Just as I'm gettin ready to strip in and recast....  Ker-flush...  A toilet bowl grab.  The muddler is gone in a swirl, the reel starts zinging and 5lbs of summer steel is in the air 30 yards below me.   The fish turns upriver and starts running at me.  I'm reeling as fast as I can, still reeling, still..... then I realize the fish is no longer attached to the fly.  Gone.  
  It was only 5, maybe 7 seconds of adrenaline.  But I'll be chasing that next surface grab relentlessly again, and again, and......