In the spring of 2016, a couple of friends and I had a goal of catching giant steelhead. At age 16 the only struggle with achieving our goal was that no one had a driver’s license. However, with just a bit of sweet talking, my buddy’s dad was willing to drive us! As the weekend came around, we made the four hour drive out to Lake Ontario to catch some chrome. It was our first time doing anything of the sort so we had very little knowledge. The reports for the season weren’t great and people were struggling to catch but we were determined to have a good trip none the less. The first three spots we stopped at had no fish. With high hopes at catching we marked a couple more spots we wanted to try. Little did we know, the next spot was a honey hole. At the time, I had never tried fly fishing so I set up my spinning rod with 10lb test and a small silver spinner. Both of my friends had been fly fishing for the past two years so they set up their 8 weights with small sculpin imitations. After about 20 minutes of fishing both of my friends had already hooked a fish and I was the only one left that had to break the skunk. We were running out of daylight and both my friends had landed several fish, so they agreed to hand me the next fish they hooked. With that being said, I lost six or seven fish on the fly that day and being the perfectionist I am I was determined to change that. Since we decided to make a weekend trip
out of it, the next day I borrowed small streamers off my friends and threw those on my spinning rod. Trust me, it is much easier to aim your casts on the fly than with a spinning rod which lead me to spooking several fish. My luck completely changed with the flies over the spinners and I managed to hook several fish on the spinning rod, including the BIGGEST of the trip! (Pictures
Attached)

At the end of the trip I couldn’t have been more pumped with the quality of the fish I caught and the experience, but there was still one thing missing. A fly rod in my arsenal! The day after returning from the trip, I made a trip to SAIL and purchased my first every fly rod which was the Echo Base 9’ 8wt combo which I owned for three years before upgrading this past season. Today I spend my time fly fishing as much as possible, whether it be rivers for trout or lakes for gar and other warm water species. In the future I aim to travel as much as possible to
chase all sorts of species on the fly from coast to coast.

And that, is where it all began...

Darian Savage, January 2020