What is it - "the Guest Shot"? "From time to time, Dan will post a piece by another writer here in "Guest Shot." These may be stories, feature articles, poems or whatever piece of writing strikes Dan's fancy. As new pieces are posted, previous pieces will roll into the archives, so they will always be available for your reading pleasure. Enjoy your visit to this page, and let us know what you think of Dan's choices!"

Sleet as hard as No. 4 buckshot pelted us as we waded into the lower Platte River.

It was late March, and winter wouldn't die. It was 15 above, the water was 33 degrees, and the-wind driven sleet was as subtle as a body slam.

We eased in, studied it, and it hit me: what I thought was bottom was moving. The slow submerged movement rocked me to my numbed toes.

"Whoa," I muttered. "Paul, we just found steelheading's Mother Lode."

"Say what?" he asked. "It's too cold to stand here telling stories."

"No, look!. Watch the water. This hole is loaded with steelhead."

Paul Kerby of Mancelona needed little persuasion to fish. He knotted a Platte River Special to his six-pound tippet, shook out some fly line and cast above the huge pod of fish. The fly drifted down along bottom, and a lively six-pounder took the fly and Kerby buried the hook.

The fish bounced into the air like a kid on a trampoline, and began a long run downstream. Paul, a veteran of many such battles, stayed close so he could steer it away from logjams or other obstacles.

"Later," he said, running through thigh-deep water after the wild fish.

Orange was hot because they were silver fish from Lake Michigan. An orange fly would imitate free-drifting salmon or steelhead eggs.

A Dave's Special, another orange-colored fly that my brother George invented years before, was tied on (see sidebar). The fish were still milling around. The hole met their needs; it was six feet deep, 600 yards above the mouth and hooked fish would run down toward Platte Bay.

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