Braggin Board for Fishing!

Fished the past couple days, it was slow, but enough fish around to keep it fun, low low water for a long time, so it was certainly a sort, but I don’t really care about killing winter steelhead regardless, I just like hunting them down and getting bit. Pressure has been very low which I like

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IMG_0022.jpegMy PB from Lake Vermillion back in 2012. I caught 3 over 52” on that trip. This one was 53.75” and likely around 45#, caught on Halloween on a large tube called “Halloweenie”! Haven’t replicated that trip since! Those days I was in my fishing prime- single, no kids, and 30 years old! I could throw those big baits all day and definitely had the musky bug!!!
 
Fished the last couple days, still scratch fishing, but finding a few biters a day IMG_4291.jpeg
 

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There is something strange going on this year, winter steelhead are generally the worst quality salmon for tablefare, bland and very easy to overcook,(no fat content) this year they are loaded with fat, literally summer steelhead quality. Even the hens are very edible and enjoyable

There must have been a lot of feed where they lived in the ocean, I have never seen anything like it, and it’s not just one outlier, they all have way more fat than normalIMG_4300.jpeg
 
Couple more examples, lots of visible fat throughout the whole fillet and skeletal system, it’s wild. It’s seriously on par with summer steelhead or spring chinook with fat content… completely the opposite of typical winter steelhead, which fresh bucks are decent fresh, chrome hens are edible but not much more… this year they have been excellent eating

Not a lot of numbers around this year, but the ones around sure seem healthy. More big fish too, I have been getting 3-5 a day for a lot of effort, and have caught several over 35”, including 2 mega hens. It’s been enjoyable, but in a different way.

If the summers inhabit the same area as the winters, they are going to be Wagyu steelhead. Kind of an interesting thing for those who are familiar with winter steelhead, it’s kind of fascinating to me, I have been at it for quite awhile, and have never seen anything like it.
 

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There is something strange going on this year, winter steelhead are generally the worst quality salmon for tablefare, bland and very easy to overcook,(no fat content) this year they are loaded with fat, literally summer steelhead quality. Even the hens are very edible and enjoyable

There must have been a lot of feed where they lived in the ocean, I have never seen anything like it, and it’s not just one outlier, they all have way more fat than normalView attachment 1022013
What is a steelhead salmon???
 
What is a steelhead salmon???
Salmon is short for salmonidae, it wasn’t a typo, they are all in the same family, and all of the anadromous species are even more similar, especially when talking about edibility.

Of course steelhead are steelhead, but they are more like a salmon then a resident rainbow, both in life cycle and tablefare
 
Here’s a little known fact. All of the rainbow trout currently swimming in the lakes and rivers of New Zealand, are direct descendants from northern California’s Russian river steelhead. The steelhead eggs were brought over in 1877, but the fish that would eventually make it out to sea were lost for various unknown, although highly hypothesized, reasons, so only the landlocked trout remain.


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