The right idea on commuting

A SUBTLE BITE IS followed by a frantic dash toward the far bank, a leap and a shake, another series of runs and more airborne gyrations to lose the hook. My resolve is steady and my line tight. I have no margin for error because time is short to get my steelhead fix. If this beauty gets away, it will be through no fault of mine.

J.D. Richey, who runs his own guide service, invited me for a one-day banzai trip to prove it’s possible to catch steelhead in Northern California and make it back to Los Angeles before anyone knows I am gone.

I booked a round-trip flight on Southwest Airlines for $174, though lower rates are sometimes available. Richey charges $295 for a day aboard his 20-foot drift boat, including lunch, making the trip doable for the hard-core angler in need of action after a long, dreary winter.

The adventure begins at 4 a.m. on a Tuesday, when I awake to catch a 6:40 flight at LAX. Robot-like commuter fliers are milling about the terminal, receiving commands via cellphone. I wear shorts and a sweatshirt, carry a daypack and board the plane, wanting only to close my eyes and enjoy visions of steelhead dancing on the end of my line.

The plane lands at 7:55 and Richey meets me with his truck and drift boat in tow. We launch on the American River by 8:30. Tim Reilly, a local resident and veteran angler, joins us after leaving a vehicle at the take-out spot eight miles downstream.

The American River near downtown is not a famed fishery, yet it is flanked by scenic parkland and seems a world removed from civilization. Deer are foraging in nearby meadows. Mallards are nestling in pairs against the banks. Wild turkeys are scurrying up cliffs across the river. The water holds consistent seasonal fishing for salmon, steelhead, striped bass and shad.

We are after spring-run steelhead. They’re smaller, on average, than the 6- to 10-pound winter-run variety but generally more cooperative. Fish entering the river are either wild or products of a hatchery just upriver at the Nimbus dam. Anglers can keep one hatchery-reared steelhead per day.

Our plan is to release everything, assuming we have that option. Though Richey is an expert at side-drifting, there are no guarantees, and we keep telling ourselves this as two hours pass with only one taker: a small wild steelhead caught by Reilly.

Farther downstream, the landscape changes to grassy banks lined with musty brown cottonwoods, their leafless branches offering refuge for egrets taking breaks between meals of salmon fry plucked from the shallows. A great blue heron, still hunting, stands motionless on the pebbly shore.

We use light spinning tackle and night crawlers bounced along the bottom. Richey said the technique produces a daily average of three to five adult steelhead, along with several juveniles. “So we’ve obviously got our work cut out,” he says, while rowing into position. “But I’m not worried. Down here is one of my money spots.”

As we drift along the left bank and prepare to cast to our right, Richey produces an unmarked spray bottle full of what he called “Bubba juice” and squirts some on our worms. The secret formula, acquired from friends in Alaska, smells faintly of rubbing alcohol and seems an odd last resort. Reilly and I have our doubts as we toss our crawlers just beyond a mid-river riffles.

Almost immediately, I feel a lazy pull on my line. Instinctively, I rear back and the line screams from my reel for several seconds before the magnificent fish reveals itself with an acrobatic display on the opposite bank. After running upstream, it sprints downstream and across the river into the shallows off our bow, where it launches itself again and again.

Finally, the fish runs out of fight and I log the first significant catch at 12:27 p.m., about a 5-pound steelhead that we net, admire and release. “Must be the alcohol,” Reilly says. The pressure is off and the river seems to come alive. An osprey circles overhead and swallows pluck insects from the surface and a garter snake swims to the other side.

I get a second strike and catch a slightly smaller steelhead, then Reilly catches one before handing his rod to the guide as he takes the oars. Richey immediately hooks up and reels in a 4-pounder, leaving me to wonder how many we might have caught had he been fishing all along.

We tally five fish before departing at 5:15 p.m. I arrive back at the airport in time for a 7:30 return flight, sitting near the same commuters I saw in the morning, too weary to even wonder how their day went.

To e-mail Pete Thomas or read his previous Fair Game columns, go to latimes.com /petethomas.