Explaining the Insanity: Winter Steelhead

Standing in a frozen river, covering giant amounts of water, and doing it all alone is not many people’s idea of a hobby, much less an obsession.  But it’s what winter steelhead fly fishermen do whenever they have the opportunity.  Following the video “One in Winter,” Ryan Peterson attempts to put in words the obsession with one of the most romanticized fish.

“You might also be regaled by the legend that high-seas commercial fishermen rarely intercept steelhead as bycatch in their nets, suggesting a steelhead’s epic peregrinations are committed to solo, without friends in schools. They’re lone wolves out there, mysterious and supremely noble in the icy gray – the ultimate, fitting match for someone unimpressed by the listlessness of day-to-day society.”