“This morning it’s going to be windy, you’re going to have to cast off the left shoulder, really focus on casting far.” Matt Mendes attached the rod holders to the top of the Ford and strapped down the 12- and 13-foot Spey rods. We rumbled out the dirt roads along the Deschutes.

Matt guides the Warm Springs Reservation side of the Deschutes River like his grandfather did before him.

There were three of us plus Matt, headed to the river on a gray and windy December morning. Jeff Johnson, Lindsay Valentine and I agreed. This might not be the best steelhead run in recent memory, but if we are steelheaders, we must fish.

I picked my way to the top of my favorite riffle. A few hundred yards upriver, Lindsay and Jeff walked along the bank then worked their way in the water past their knees.

By way of instruction, Matt told a story about a fisherman from California who he thought was talking to himself, but when Matt asked, he said he was talking to the Lord. This guy’s two-handed casts kept piling up on the water, Matt said. Matt kept trying to tell him how to make the cast really sing.

The trick with a Spey rod is to know when to load it and when to release the power — at the top of the cast. That way the line booms out, the leader straightens and the fly splashes in last. Finally Matt told the guy, “Give it to God.” That did the trick.

Flyfishing the swing for steelhead in winter is a form of religious penance or prayer. The fly is cast quartering-down then is allowed to scribe an arc where the offering is showed sideways to holding or moving fish. It tempts the most aggressive steelhead to chase, to follow, to snap at the fly.

Steelhead are not as grabby in cold water, so the angler steps downstream then casts again. Matt told me not to take two steps down. “Step down a fish,” he said. If a steelhead averages about 26 inches long that’s how far I would move between each cast.

Matt stood alongside and helped correct my own casting deficiencies. Then he looked upstream and saw Lindsay’s rod bent against a steelhead. He waded out and walked up to help him land it.

I pulled my hat down tight against the wind and talked to myself.

My friend Bill Valentine used to talk to himself on the river. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.

The cast starts with the line trailing downstream, the tip moving up.

Touch tip to the water. Over the left shoulder. High and slow. Give it to God. Lift and mend. Cork the line. Tip to the water. Follow the head. Steer the head. At the end of the swing, step down a fish. Strip. Tip to the water. Give it to God.

It’s like meditation. Then a fish pulls.

Midway through the swing a fish tugged. I waited for line to peel off the reel, ready for the fish to turn, to spin the handle. It didn’t happen this time.

Upstream, 25-year-old Lindsay, his father’s son, was probably talking to himself, holding the rod with two hands, the reel close to his chest, watching the sink tip come out of the water, the fish, golden and rosy, showing in the braided water.

He steered the fish to the shallows then, a hand on the leader, the other hand slid down to the “wrist” at the tail. Lindsay cradled the rainbow-colored steelhead, its nose in the water, twisted out the hook and watched it kick away into the current.

The last time I fished with Matt, his grandfather Al Bagley had shown up, and my friend Bill Valentine was there too. Today there is a run named after Billy.

“You don’t want to have your name on a run here,” Matt told me. “It means you’re not with us anymore.”

Late in the day, Matt and I watched Lindsay work his dad’s old 8-weight Spey. We could not help but notice the way he gathered line, stepping straight downriver to turn and square up like his dad did, then boom the line out, then switch hands halfway through the swing, steering the Skagit head under the overhanging trees. Muttering under his breath the way his dad used to.

Spread out through a bouldery run, shoulders hunched against the cold, we cast, swung and stepped till the sun went down on the western shore yet lingered on the tops of the hills. Our Spey lines lifted off the water, ripping the tops off the wavelets like flying spin-drift. Like the words whispered under our breath.

Flyfishing the swing for steelhead in winter is a form of religious penance or prayer.