April first, the traditional opening of trout season in New York State, often greets anglers with high, cold, and stained water as winter’s grip lessons and the snow melts. This year was an exception and the waters were low, clear and stocked with willing 4-8 inch trout. This did not concern me however, as I was off in the early pre-dawn light to find my winter quarry, Steelhead. It’s a 2 ½ hour trip, one way, although it’s not too far to make it out and back in one day and get 12 solid hours of angling in. It has been a long season for me, not in the fact that I didn’t spend much time on the water, I did, but it was a season of quick long-distance releases and small fish. I had also been averaging 2 to 3 hook-ups a trip all winter so to drop one or two fish a day, either breaking them off or having the hooks pop out, was frustrating at best. I chocked all this up to my new spey rod and a misunderstanding of the hook-setting abilities it held. I had several theories and this kept me going back for more. I also had begun, this season, to do more fishing with the indicator and had varied success. I was hoping to find the water temperature in the low forties and was driving the rain-soaked thruway with visions of swinging large streamers on a sink-tip to aggressive spawning steelhead. We tried this for about two hours with no luck. The overnight rain had colored the water and the power company in charge with the flow had bumped the level to a full gate. The colder water coming out of the half frozen resevior made the temperature plummit and seemed to have the steelhead off the bite. Since this was the opening day of trout season, the upper fly zone had also opened. We changed our origional plan to avoid this area due to the crowds that were no doubt in attendance, and we ventured up. The upper fly zone, bearing no resemblance to the lower zone and it’s reputation, holds one of the prettiest settings and larger holes on the entire river. Aptly named “Paradise Pool,” it has been the site of many epic battles in my steelhead and salmon career and I was looking forward to seeing it again. We made our way through the woods and snuck in the back-side of the “zone.” This requires an extensive walk as there was no safe way to cross the upper fly zone at this flow. We pulled into paradise and I looked at the crowd on the opposite side and there was a familiar face. A friend of mine was staring across the river at me and we exchanged greetings. He proclaimed that the fishing was slow and they needed to be showed how it was done. I readied myself in position and cast out just beyond my spey rod and let the fly drift as I let some line out to make a “real” cast. I lifted the rod and thought I felt a tug, which the fly pulled out of quickly. That was weird, I thought and sent the fly into the current and high sticked the drift. Bump Bump, Set “Fish-On!!” I said, “No” Came the reply from across the river, and the line started to head out. The heavy thumping and the short runs the fish took let me know that this was a sizable brown at the end of my line. I landed the fish, took a quick picture and set up to drift again. “Fish-On” Another brown took the egg-sucking leech, 3 feet into the swing. Another land and release and it’s my buds turn. “Fish-on” he said. Another football shaped brown. Football? No, more like Rugby Ball shaped. We proceeded to catch and release 12-15 browns in the 3-6lb range, all on the hot pink and purple egg sucking leech. I changed my rig to include an indicator and the fun continued. At one point the action slowed down to a hit every fifth cast. And we were joking that we had caught all the browns in the pool, when the indicator sunk again. The thump on the end of the line was different this time and the fish screamed to the center of the river. The line bucked again and the fish skied 3 feet out of the water. “Steelhead!” Everyone yelled. The fish surged again and finally came to hand. A gray winter spawned out buck steelhead of about 7 pounds posed for a quick picture and I released the majestic animal. One more fish came out of it’s layer to grab my offering and this fish just made me look stupid. It’s screamed into the current and around the trees and was gone. We migrated upstream to new water and we picked the pockets and fast water landing 2 more browns but no steelhead. I approached the wire, which marked the end of the upper fly zone, and started drifting a glo bug. I had lost all my egg suckers and this egg was the same color as the front of the leech. There were 6 people on the opposite side of the pool but I was alone on my side. On the third drift the indicator sunk and I set up on the fish. It screamed out of the pool and into the funnel of the run below. I followed, stumbling around on the rocks, avoiding trees and keeping the line away from the rocks which threatened to cut the leader. I landed the colored up buck at the end of the run, 100 yard downstream of where he was hooked. Another picture and he was gone. I made my way back to the pool and proceeded to land six more small steelhead and lost at least that many including one pig of a fish which had crossed the line of another angler across the river who also had a nice fish on. As we made the long walk back, I reflected back on this day, and the entire winter, knowing that this was possibly my last trip for silver this season, no, probably one more.