Bull!

3/13/08
Sauk River: two bull trout, zero steelhead.

3/15/08
Yakima River: Three li'l pigs, all 'bows, each of 'em on a stimmy.

Hold Still For Your Picture Dammit!

October Caddis

Burning Pram V

Less than two weeks until Burning Pram V. Start thinking about your alibi.

Exhibit A
Exhibit B
Exhibit C
Exhibit D

"On a scale of 1 to 2"

Flytimes Skwala Nymph

hook: TMC 200R, #8-#10
tails: light brown super floss
body: light brown sparkle yarn
legs: light brown super floss
thorax: olive gray Arizona Scud Blend

Ken: On a scale of 1 to 2, 1 being the worst and 2 being the best, how would you rate the fishing today Wally?
Me: 1
That was the rating system that Ken came up with during our Saturday afternoon float. Its a system that accurately reflects the binary mood of the Yakima River in early spring. The fish are either on or off.
In fact, now that I think about it, it's not early spring on the Yak, it's winter. Saturday night was the first night in weeks that the temperature did not dive below the freezing mark on thee olde thermometer. Snow still covered the northern slopes of the surrounding hills and river banks.
Sunday wasn't much better though I did see exactly one adult skwala. Clouds settled in just above the canyon rim. The light was low and gray and a very slight breeze blew downstream. It seemed like baetis weather but there were only a few midges.
Snap was in the boat with me for the afternoon. We took turns rowing, the other casting adult skwalas into all the likely lies. In a normal year (whatever that is) it might have been too early for skwalas, or it might have been exquisite timing, fishing the hatch just when the trouts were turning on to the big bugs. As it was we were way too early. Winter still lives in the Yakima River Canyon.

Go Ugly Early or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying 'Cause This Fly is the Bomb!

Peacock Skwala Stimmy

hook: TMC 200R #10
tail: deer hair
aft hackle: brown saddle
body: peacock herl
wing: deer hair
fore hackle: grizzly saddle
thorax: yellow Superfine dubbing

Those winter steelies better get with the program. I'm giving them one more month to start biting before I retreat back to the trout streams.
Sometime in early March the skwala stoneflies start hatching. Couple that hatch with a staunch blue wing olive emergence and you got some of the best trout fishing of the year.
This here skwala fly is my most productive pattern. I have tried to tie more complicated and convoluted imitations but I keep coming back to this one. An oldy but goody to be sure but the secret to getting the most out next month's skwala hatch is to get on it before everyone else. The homestream gets crowded and after seeing 10,000 or so skwala imitations the trouts get a little weary of big an hairy flies.

Little Brown Stonefly

Early Stonefly

Here in the American West we call the smallish dark stoneflies that hatch in late winter Little Brown Stoneflies. Over in Finland they have the February Red, which seems to be, more or less, the same bug. Olli describes the bug and its importance to fish and fisherman on his blog, Opax Fly Fishing.

Of Hoppers and Cutthroat

Basalt River


Jimmy Legs Hopper


Native Cutthroat

Thee Trouts Await

Basalt River RR Bridge

The light is changing
The moon's out longer
Fall is upon us
Load the truck.

Breaking: Umptanum & Bighorn Land Swap

From Ass Hooked Whitey:
We've been hearing rumors that Jack Mitchell's tenure in the Yakima canyon (AHW's home waters) may be about to come to an end. Mitchell has been leasing two launches/camps -- Umptanum and Big Horn...The Scoop

Cutthroat

Westslope Cutthroat

Monday night the West Seattle Posse got together to rob me of half my allowance. Poker that is. The big winner was a gracious enough to buy me breakfast the next morning.
I ordered the usual; 2 eggs OM, hash browns, english muffin and a cupp-a-joe.
JT had his usual, whatever that is.
We scarffed it all down and were on the road by 0930hrs, bright and early.
Pulled off in a little mountain town for gas, JT kicked in for that too, must be learning manners up there in Eh-Land.
As far as the WDFW is concerned the year starts April 1st so we had to pick up new fishing licenses. JT lives in Canada but he convinced the kid behind the counter that he's still a Washington resident.
After all that noise we still managed to get on the water before the hatch. The first thing we discovered was that beavers had altered the flow of the river reducing side channel johansen to a mere trickle.
Its possible that the the high flows had actually changed the streambed but I'm not prepared to let the beavers off that easy.
There are hardly any fish in this river so the trick is to be exactly where the fish are exactly when the hatch is coming off. JT worked the head of a nice pool upstream of the side channel and I worked a rip rap bank well downstream. We both managed the "trick" well enough considering that the hatch was pretty thin. I landed two cutts and a 'bow. WT, I mean JT (thats what Sven calls him) landed three 'bows and a whitey. We weren't competing but if we were I think I would have won.

Blown

March 30, 06. The March Brown Drake hatch has begun in earnest but there weren't enough of the big mays to raise any fish. I had to fish with nymphs, stonefly with a pheasant tail dropper. The pheasant tail took three rainbows and a bunch of whitefish.

Camping at Big Pine

Thee and myself spent a couple of days fishing and camping in the Yakima River canyon. The water was ice cold, flowing at ~1300 CFS, and the winds were howlin but we both managed to get into fish. The baetis and the skwalas have begun their emergences, it will only get better in the coming weeks.
The radio reported that a snowstorm blew into the cascades this morning. I drove the Honda Civic this time as it uses half the gas my Jeep does (thanks Bush) and decided that I better skip fishing today and get over the pass as soon as possible. As it was I barely made it over. Coming down the west side was even worse. At one point I had no control over the car and the slush sucked me over to the shoulder. My car kissed the wall bumping me back onto the highway. The hub caps are a little worse for wear but it could have been a lot worse. Good thing I was going slow.
The moral of the story is not to cross the pass in a little Honda, without chains, when chains are required.
WT

The Yakima River in March

Two days after I returned from Belize I found myself in the Lower Canyon. The sun had already dipped below the western rim when I got there. There wasn't much time so I went straight to the Tomato Juice Hole. I had pulled my last fish of the '04 season from that hole so it was fitting that the first fish of this year came from there too.
Sven had fished all afternoon to rising trout right in front of the camp site. He told me that the baetis hatch started at "noon-thirty" and went for at least a couple of hours. After supper we sat around the campfire and drank a few beers, some single malt scotch and a little Jaegermeister. Just before Sven retired to his tent he forecasted a great day of fishing for the next day.
The next morning was beautiful. The sun warmed the canyon floor to above freezing almost negating the need to re-ignite the campfire. The wind was less than a gentle breeze. It was all more than I deserved. I made a couple of egg sandwiches for breakfast. After coffee I donned my waders and grabbed my fly rod as did Sven.
We crossed the river and walked up the railroad tracks on the far side. All the water looked good but we continued to walk upstream looking for chukars in the breaks above us and trouts in the water below.
One quarter mile above the camp I skidded down the bank and gently stepped into the river. Working my way upstream I cast a skwala imitation to all the likely holding spots. You never really see a lot of those skwala stoneflies but the trout take them when they are present in any number. I took a few fish with the skwala pattern before I noticed the mayflies that were beginning to come off.
I clipped off the big fly and tied on a #18 polly winged dun. After only a few minutes the polly dun, or Pauly as the pattern has since become to be known, had proved to be a very effective baetis imitation.
Armed with the appropriate fly and the tactical knowledge of the situation Sven and I caught many trouts as we leap frogged each other up the river.
For now there was plenty of water, by the weekend the 9 to 5'ers would be spraying casts all over the canyon. But the weekend was days away. We had this stretch of the river to ourselves and fully took advantage of it.
There wasn't much to complain about for the rest of the month either. The weather was about the only thing that changed, that whole "in like a lamb/out like a lion bit' proved itself true yet again. The mayflies didn't seem to mind as they kept on hatching everyday, though never at the same time more than two days in a row.
Ken, Karl and myself camped out one weekend. It was of course the first rainy weekend of the month but we managed to catch lots of fish and have a good campout. Many beers were drank and stories told, the usual campfire scene. Saturday night we were all suprised by the sudden appeareance of JT. JT was in the country for only a few days so we were all real happy to spend time with him around the campfire.
By the end of the month I had spent seven or eight days on the water. If the fish weren't taking baetis, they would take a skwala. I only had to resort to fishing with a nymph one morning and it worked so well that it was almost as fun as fishing a dry fly. I camped out three times and fished with at least four different people and while it aint about numbers I feel obliged to mention that I did catch dozens of trout.

Upper Canyon, Yakima River 1/28/05

Today was my first day on the Yak this year, Sven tagged along. Our main goal of the day was to get out of our houses, swing some streamers and maybe catch some fish. At the end of the day we settled for 2 out of three. Upon out return we headed up to the local were we met Kevin.
Flows at Umtanum were 1800cfs.

Post Script: Yakima River 11/8/04

I started out fishing both sides of the river near MP**. Baetis and a few mahogonies mixed in. Followed the sun down to Frustration Flats. Lots of risers including some bigguns. Landed a few 12 inchers then left the flats frustrated. Chased the sun down to MP*. Someone was parked there so I moved down to the lonesome pine. From the road I spotted a few risers. By the time I got down to the river a full hatch was coming off. Many large trouts came to hand. When I left it was almost dark and there were still duns floating down the river.