The Drift 6 boys came into town and Confluence had a three boat trip on the Trinity. I had John and Sean with me and we went to work chasing these elusive sea-run rainbow trout that we all love. Right off the bat we hooked a fish in the first riffle, but just as quick as it grabbed Sean's fly, it came unbuttoned. No! That being said, sometimes getting one in immediately feels like the "kiss of death" because sometimes that's the only fish you touch. Luckily that wasn't the case because John hooked into a REALLY nice fish about twenty minutes later. And boy did it bull dog him. Runs and head shakes and more strong pulls. The fish went from one side of the boat to the other, but John played it perfectly and we finally got to see the fish as it slowly worked its way up toward the surface. Low and behold, it was a brown! A big brown! YES! While not being the steelhead we were chasing, catching a unicorn like that was awesome! That brown was planning on a stonefly breakfast, but John smacked it in the face and put it in the net. Excellent!

A couple hours later, while floating under a bridge, we struck trout-troll gold and Sean hooked into a fish that would... not... give... up. Runs and head shakes and more runs and swimming in circles and when it finally came up, we saw it and it was big. Just over 27 inches of steelhead love that ate a frenchie. The rest of the day had Sean speaking French and saying, "Oui Oui." It might be his favorite steelhead fly now.

We hooked a few more adults and landed some of them and we also had a handful of half-pounders eat some flies. The action was steady throughout the day and just when it felt like we were in a slow lull, the bobber would go down!

The brown made the day. The big steelhead made the day. Everything else was a cherry on top and I was really happy to be a part of such a fun day with some cool guys. Drift Six is a cool group of guys, but maybe it should be Drift Seven and they should let me in!