It was somewhere around 8 a.m. before the reality of our situation began to sink in. We’d gone without breakfast in order to be in the rig by five and had spent the past three hours taking highway curves much too fast, barreling dangerously down a network of old logging roads, and poking into assorted pullouts with the hope that at least one would be empty.

Early in our week on Prince of Wales Island there was considerably less to fret about where other anglers were the concern. In five days we’d fished about eight different streams, all accessed via road and our own two feet, all hosting runs of native steelhead. We’d hardly seen another rod in all that time.

Of course, it had been raining nearly nonstop and by the hour we’d watched these tannic-colored rivers and creeks swell until waterskiing seemed a more likely possibility than anything that involved fish actually coming into contact with a fly. However, sometime during the backside of the week, the rain stopped, the sun appeared, and though it would be another ten days before I felt dry again, the creeks started to snap back into shape. Mistrustful, even jaded, we nevertheless kept a close eye on the situation, and by late Saturday night, when it became apparent conditions would indeed break perfect on Staney in the morning, I found myself accosted by all sorts of pins and needles. This creek was among the best producers on the island and it had blown out first and worst. The fish were in before, and high water would have done nothing if not bring more. And they’d been left alone for a week.

At pullout number six—two cars, one camper—I wasn’t thinking about solitude and steelhead so much anymore as I was the three-course breakfast I’d skipped and the fact that I might as well have gone berry-picking if I’d wanted peace and quiet. It wasn’t happening. Not on this stream, not on this day.

The realization settled like a lead weight into the bottom of my gut. Naturally, I assumed the folks who’d outraced us to all these spots were yarding in steelhead at a shrimper’s clip. I felt sick all over, and probably not from hunger.

Though less than helpful when actually on the stream—or standing just back from it, watching someone else casting into the pool you’d hoped to lockdown for yourself—it’s nice to know that these things happen to everybody. Salmon anglers get low-holed, too, and for every trout bum willing to forgo the day’s chores to get to the water early, there’s another willing to give up more. It just seems to be more prevalent with steelheaders, who’ll famously go to any extreme for even the hint of a fish.

For example, I know of a story from Idaho’s Clearwater River that perfectly illustrates the phenomenon. As it goes, a local angler had been schlepping down to the river every morning for two weeks, looking for a good take before hauling himself to work. Only each day he got to his favorite pool, earlier and earlier as the week went on, and found another angler already there. Always the same guy, always the same spot.

Well, as the run peaked, Angler A decided he’d had enough. He was going to arrive first and claim the pool. He rose and traveled to the river in darkness, strung up his rod and tied on a fly by feel, and began tiptoeing towards the sounds of rushing water.

He had to tiptoe because the first thing he noticed was that Angler B was already there. Or at least his truck was. He’d been sleeping in it.

But Angler A, possessing some of a puma’s stealth, slides past the vehicle without a sound, navigates the winding trail that leads to the Clearwater, and eases himself into the current. He can’t see more than two or three feet in front of him, but he doesn’t dare risk switching on his headlamp.

It’s still too dark to cast, he thinks, so he waits patiently, smiling at the prospect daybreak brings: Angler B finding the pool taken, and himself, the hardcore hero, casting gracefully to a run full of fish. Then he hears it: Against all possible reason, line is streaking from a reel, the drag whines, and—splash—a fish jumps. He hits the switch on his lamp and there he is, Angler B, not ten feet away, grinning wildly, hard into a fresh steelhead.

Back on Prince of Wales’ Staney Creek, I’m at least comforted by the fact that I haven’t worked very hard or given much up to get this schooling. I’ve skipped breakfast before.

Still, it begs the question, Why are these fish so important?

I guess I don’t totally know, but steelhead certainly make up a portion of the small cabal of the world’s gamefish that have been imbued with notions of high romance. Only a few others are in its class when the passions of anglers become the matter at hand. And, perhaps in derivative fashion, the waters these fish return to are also extended Ruritanian virtue. Come hell or high water, fly anglers are going to get to the best steelhead runs, and trust me, they’re all going to try to get there before you.

To me, then, what matters most is what happens when we arrive together. I doubt anyone can assume a stance of moral superiority faster than a guy with his barbs pinched, and if you do happen to see a fly fisher standing on his soapbox in this day and age, there’s a fair chance he or she will be waxing poetic on all the ways fly-fishing is about more than just catching fish. That’s all well and good around the coffee pot back at the fly shop, in fishing videos, and throughout the pages of a magazine, but increasingly, if you happen to meet that same guy on an Alaska trout or steelhead stream, he’ll likely come at you with the sort of defend-the-fort-at-all-costs attitude that made the fellas at the Alamo famous.

In the end, it’s the difference between practicing and preaching, and while considerably more difficult for me when steelhead are at issue, my companions and I chatted it over and made the decision to try another river rather than attempt to carve out a little piece of another guy’s water.

The high road, and predictably, the fishless road as well. But what’s a guy to do, other than bring a sleeping bag next time?