I don’t think we could have had a prettier day to float the Methow River last Friday. I am not sure we could have done much better fishing either. Jim Passage and I started out with our fly rods and given that I was pretty rusty, I still got two nice wild fish using this method. Our guide, Aaron O’Leary, sure put us through some great water, and I am pretty sure I missed a fished within five minutes of leaving the launch. Passage had told me that the last time he floated the river his partner that day caught a bunch of steelhead using a pin reel and rod. Aaron had put a couple of these rods in the boat and after lunch we switched to this new technique. I got a wild fish right away, and wound up getting two more fish, which were both hatchery fish. Passage got red hot in one drift, and hooked six and landed three in one hole. Two of them were wild fish of over 10 pounds. Casting with these reels is very tricky, but the 11 to 13 foot rods were a real benefit for line control to our bobbers. The steelhead loved the salmon-egg colored beads we were fishing, too.