Coastal Cutthroat bonanza on the fly

I headed west this afternoon to fish a coastal stream (which will remain unnamed), looking for steelhead. It's a river I've been scouting for a little while, waiting to get my license.

I was using my standby, black, size 10 beadhead woolybugger. It wasn't doing much, so I put on a tiny orange nymph float. Soon after, I figured it out -- fish were hitting my orange float.

From MattStansberry

I switched out to an egg pattern and started catching cuttrhoats on an egg and indicator rig. The first few were tiny, but as I worked upstream to bigger pools I started catching bigger fish in the 14" range.

As it got dark I switched back to my woolybugger so the fish could see it. They started getting more aggressive and taking it on the swing.

They weren't giant winter steelhead, but you know, after catching about 15 of them I lost count.