I am going to blame the warm weather for the luke warm opening of the steelhead season here in our area. If you look at the dam counts, there are plenty of fish around, but the bite was very slow, from what I saw while fishing near Pateros. My fishing buddy Rollie Schmitten and I tried a couple of spots in the estuary of the Methow River to start with, and only heard of a couple of fish caught when speaking to other boaters and bank anglers. We then headed down to The Rocks, and may have had a hit or two but gave that up and ran to the other side of the Columbia and tried a “sure thing” drift over there. Once again we may have had hit, but left with nothing to show for our efforts. I decided to pull the boat and head for Bridgeport. We did find two anglers that had two hatchery fish at the launch. After making some long drifts at the Blow Hole and the Bridge, we jumped to the Pines, and here we each got a fish, including one hatchery keeper. Whew. It was a near thing, but we avoided a skunk.