Steelhead!

Went with my brother and a friend to the local fly-fishing club's monthly dinner the other night, and damn, was it mellow! Mild guys telling mild lies about pheeshin'! Pretty great.

Speaker was a cat from Michigan who's an expert on steelhead trout, has written books and is proprietor of a lodge on the Monhegan, etc. Talking about the joys of fishing at 8 degrees Fahrenheit, and the like, and had a carousel of slides (yes, slides, not a powerpoint/Windows flashy thing, but freakin' slides for optimum Don Draper-y weepiness potential).



What was amazing was a little factoid he threw out about the steelhead's migratory pattern. A steelhead from a little tributary in northern California will go out to the ocean, as they can also do saltwater. They love to swarm around the Sea of Irkutsk, above Japan, sorta in Russian area...the Japanese love to fish steelheads. [suitably dreary Ikutskian outpost at left]

Anyway, at some point, their pineal gland, which senses daylight/seasons etc will tell them "Hey, dummy! Time to spawn!" and in two weeks, they will haul ass back to the same tributary and, settling down to get ready for spawning season, they will often come back to rest up within fifty feet of where they hatched. Read that again.

The point is: we think fish are dumb, but where are your car keys right now?