Rollie Schmitten and I have spent many days over the years fishing for steelhead on the upper Columbia, and he was excited about the opportunity to fish the opener on Wednesday. We left my house before sunrise to be on the water early at Wells Dam. We have had some great days here casting bobbers and jigs off the bar and pulling plugs along this same shoreline. There was one other boat at the bottom end of the bar and a even a fly angler casting here, too. We got in a few good drifts without a bobber going down and then switched to plugs. We were able to make one long drift, all the way down to below the powerlines. On our second attempt, I couldn’t get the boat to go downstream. The current had stopped dead, and the wind was blowing us upstream. We quit just in time as the wind really picked up. When we pulled the boat, the fish checker reported that the four boats he checked hadn’t landed a single steelhead. Still, it was great to be out after them. We’ll give it a little time and hopefully conditions and fishing will improve.