There is a strong possibility that I have found my steelheading kryptonite. You see, for research purposes I’m spending a fall, if not more, experimenting with color. I’ve been going completely scent free, focusing on the fact that steelhead are primarily sight feeders. It led me to using beads; a lot of beads. In fact with the exception of a few jigs here and there, beads are all I’ve been using. With early fall steelhead gorging on recently deposited salmon eggs, beads are a perfect alternative to running bait. And they come in seemingly infinite colors, most of which are in my bead box and have at some point enticed fish. But there’s one color that stands alone, not for its fish catching power but for the exact opposite. Here’s the thing; this color is my steelheading kryptonite, but it would seem that it is only mine. People all around me are catching fish with it. I see it everyday on social media, and I see it first hand.
The other day my good friend and fishing partner in crime, Matt and I were standing riverside. I wouldn’t go as far as to say we were having a great day but we’d hooked into a couple of fish and we’re at least content with how the day was going. But the fishing had slowed a little and the two of us were starting to mix it up, running different stuff under our floats in hopes of triggering another bite. As I stood wondering what to do next, Matt tied on a bead; an Egg Yolk bead; my steelheading kryptonite. For those of you unfamiliar with the color, it’s the one in the cover photo. As he tied he told me how it was his go to color; how in his opinion there was no better. I responded with a shrug of my shoulders and muttered something about how I had never once hooked a fish on it. Of course I’d heard it before, Matt wasn’t the only one I knew that had that much faith in that bead. On my list of top producing colors it was on the bottom.
So there, as I’ve already said, we were, standing on the bank offering each other our opinion on this so call ‘magic color’. I hardly paid any attention when Matt fired his first cast, until the float shot down and he calmly indicated that it was in fact a fish. I swear I could hear the ‘told you so’ tone in his voice. All I could think as he fought the fish was ‘you have got to be kidding me’. The two of us laughed in disbelief, well mine was in disbelief, his was more as if he knew it was coming and was overjoyed when it did.
You would think that seeing it first hand would convince me that this color is the real deal. It hasn’t, but I am stubborn and now determined to hook a fish with it, so I run the bead more than any other color. Still nothing. It’s starting to become a running joke now and the more people I ask about the bead the more I hear testimony as to just how great it is.
I find myself staring at the bead sometimes. It looks great. It looks like something a steelhead would eat, and I’ve caught fish on colors that look like nothing a steelhead would eat. So what is it? There’s no logical explanation other that the Egg Yolk bead is my kryptonite.
One Man Obsessed 