Skin in the Game with Dec Hogan
Dec Hogan is a romantic. And like all romantics his approach to life – and consequently, fishing – deals in emotions, aesthetics and relationships.
"I can still feel it now,” he says about the first steelhead he hooked. We’ve all heard those words, but for Dec it’s more than a memory of the pull on his line: it’s a feeling in his heart, and it’s a feeling that he shares with others.
Though life often takes us where we’re meant to be, the realization or actualization of that reality often lags. Such was the case for Dec. Although a keen angler, outdoorsman, birder and amateur naturalist since his early childhood in California, it took him years before he stepped into steelhead waters.
A move to western Washington in the mid-1980s, while in the Navy, opened the invitation. After arriving at the Whidbey Island base, Dec found a lifelong friend and equally-enthused and aspiring steelheader in Scott O’Donnell – nowadays a fellow spey casting instructor and steelhead guide. Following his Naval service, Dec moved to Mount Vernon, WA, thereby establishing his home waters as the ‘S-Rivers’: Puget Sound tributaries the Skagit, Sauk, Skykomish and Stillaguamish. "Big, wild, rustic, swift, and beautiful rivers filled with swing water and wild steelhead,” he recalls of those exploratory days. "My heart still pounds when I think about them."
There, two local establishments drew him deeper into the mix: predictably, the outdoor store Ed’s Sport Shop; and perhaps less so, the library. In the former, he found a steelheading mentor in Charlie Gearheart, and in the latter, he found volumes of northwest steelheading literature – from legends like Roderick Haig-Brown, Trey Combs and Bill McMillan, plus regional names like Enos Bradner, Claude Kreider and others. Dec read and re-read and, in those pages, he found feeling and beauty – and he found himself.
Finally, he was ready…
Photos by Chase White.
