Steelhead fishing on the upper Columbia is very good right now. The weather may be chilly, but the action is hot! I got a chance to fish with Bill Ballantine, Jim Passage and Rollie Schmitten aboard Shane Magnuson’s boat recently, and man what a blast. We fished near Pateros and were into our first fish about 10 minutes after we all cast our lines. Bill Ballentine caught his first steelhead, and among the five fish he landed one was a whopper hatchery buck that weighed at least 14 pounds. Jim Passage has caught a lot of steelhead with his fly rod, but had never tried fishing with a bobber and jig. He landed three fish and two were keepers. Schmitten and I each got a keeper, and the total for the day was eleven fish and five keepers. We may have made one pass without a hit at least, and one most drifts we hooked something. We were using the Yakima Bait Maxi Jigs baited with Shane’s special shrimp that have his “secret sauce” added to the brine. The mouth of the Methow is frozen and the Okanogan is frozen all the way to Omak, but there are a ton of fish in the Columbia.