So I made the trip from Sacramento, stayed overnight at the Trinity Canyon Lodge and then met Steve at the Del Loma Campground and RV Park. We launched upriver from the campground at the Del Loma Access. However, a hole that we planned to fish was already occupied by another drift boat and Steve decided to move on.

About 30 minutes into the drift, I put my Blue Fox #5 silver/blue spinner right behind a rock that looked like a perfect place for a steelhead to lurk. Rather than retrieving, I just let the spinner work in the current. I saw a steelhead suddenly flash and grab the lure, and I set the hook. The fish went absolutely berserk, coming out of the water in a series of leaps before I landed it using my custom Shikari steelhead rod with a Tika Libra SA300 spinning reel. It was a 25 inch hatchery fish and I decided to keep it for the table.

Further downriver, Harold was the next one to hook up. He caught and released a gorgeous 27 inch steelhead, also while tossing out a spinner. About an hour later, I caught the first salmon of the day, a jack, while using a spinner.

Steve wanted to take a break around 11 a.m. and we had lunch at his campsite after cleaning the steelhead. When we went back to the boat to resume our drift down to the Slide, Harold reported losing a salmon while bank fishing. "We're going to put out two K-15 Kwikfish and see if we can hook a big salmon," said Steve. "If you want big fish, you got to use a big bait."

Right after Harold put the big plug in the "slot" where we saw salmon jumping, the water exploded as a salmon grabbed his lure, but the fish got off. I quickly "walked" my Kwikfish into the slot, and immediately hooked up a big fish. I had to put a lot of pressure on the fish to keep it from getting into the rapids below, but we finally managed to get it in the net.

It was 20 pounds on the scale at Del Loma Campground. Before we got off the river at 2 p.m., Harold caught and released the third and last fish of the day - a 22 inch, 3-1/2 pound steelhead - on a spinner.

Our final tally for the day was 7 hookups, with 3 steelhead to 8 pounds and two salmon to 20 pounds landed. On the next morning, I also hooked a beautiful steelhead while tossing a spinner. It looks like this is shaping up to be another great steelhead season, based on fishing reports and counts from the Trinity River Fish Hatchery.

"This year we saw our second best steelhead season since the fish hatchery was completed after the dam was built in 1963," said Gary Ramsden, hatchery manager. "We received 6,613 steelhead from January through April."

The river also has a lot of wild steelhead that spawn in its many tributaries, although all of the fish that we landed were hatchery fish. The spring-run salmon are now spawning. To date, the hatchery has received 8,876 adult spring chinooks, compared with 7,500 fish in 2002. The total spring run last year was 11,063 fish.

2002 was the first year in memory that the spring run exceeded the fall run; the drop in fish numbers is due to the huge fish kill on the lower Klamath River in September 2002, caused by Bureau of Reclamation water diversions to agribusiness. A large percentage of king salmon lost during the fish kill were destined for the Trinity.

The hatchery will start spawning fall chinook in mid-October. "We only need about 2,000 females to obtain eggs for our production goal of 2,000,0000 fall run smolts and 900,000 yearlings," said Ramdsen.

One of the great surprises is the vibrant hatchery coho run on the Trinity; 7,175 coho returned to Trinity in 2002. Anglers can't catch or possess them under state and federal law, even though they're hatchery fish and the regulations are designed to protect endangered wild coho salmon.

Although steelhead and chinook fishing has rebounded in recent years, it is still nowhere like it was before the construction of Trinity and Lewiston dams. The Trinity Record of Decision (ROD) in December 2000 would have restored 47 percent of the river's historic flows. The ROD provided a variable flow regime based on hydrological conditions, ranging from 369,000 acre feet of water in a critically dry year to 815,000 acre feet in an extremely wet year, according to Mike Orcutt, fisheries director of the Hoopa Valley Tribe.

Unfortunately, the Westlands Water District, Northern California Power Authority (NCPA) and Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD) immediately filed a lawsuit in federal court to block implementation of the decision. SMUD and the City of Palo Alto, a member of NCPA, this year pulled out of the suit because of political pressure by the Tribe and ratepayers, but the other parties remain in the litigation.

Federal Judge Oliver Wanger in April ruled in favor of Westlands, capping Trinity flows at the dry year flows, 452,000 acre feet of water. He did allow an additional 50,000 acre feet to be released if necessary to prevent another fish kill; the Bureau of Reclamation released 37,000 acre feet of this water in August. The Tribe is appealing Wanger's decision to cap flows and is lobbying for the passage of federal legislation that includes the ROD.

Steve Huber of Steve Huber's Drift Boat Guide Service, who books only two day trips on the Trinity, can be contacted at (707) 449-0258 or 1 (866) 531-FISH (3474). For fishing information and guided trips, you can also call Jamie Munro, Trinity River Guide Service at Bigfoot Campground, (530) 623-6088; Tim King of King's Guide Service, (530) 623-3438; and Trinity Fly Shop, (530) 623-6757. For lodging and camping, contact Del Loma RV Park and Campground, (800) 839-0194, or the Trinity County Chamber of Commerce, (800) 487-4648.