Sweet Anticipation Plus a Few New Flies

Newly Minted

Its raining in Vancouver today, hard. Its been a week since we had much measurable rainfall and the rivers have gotten pretty low. Over the next two or three days some areas of the Pacific Northwest are forecasted to see a few inches worth of rain, how much actually falls remains to be seen. Generally though its pretty likely that depending on where you're fishing conditions will range from absolutely perfectly cherry to somewhere just shy of flood stage. With a week of fishing ahead of me I'm taking a wait and see approach, watch the hydrographs and the weather forecast closely and make a call when things get a little bit more clear. For a normal member of society unaccustomed to the whims of winter river conditions it might seem maddening, particularly when most people plan vacations months ahead of time. For the steelheader it offers the tantalizing possibility that one or more of the favored stomping grounds could be fishing perfectly. A little high and green always beats the hell out of low and clear.

I've also been doing a good deal of tying lately. Then again, when am I not? Fishing with Ralf last weekend got me thinking about pattern design, size and what makes a steelhead bug "fishy". He's a proponent of smaller flies, tied sparse with just a little bit of flash so they sink well, but have lots of lifelike movement and shimmer. I've always loved the classic lines and sensibility of spey style flies but the appeal of more modern fly design with its emphasis on tubes and stingers, articulated, flash covered sea creature like monstrosities tends to also play a prominent role in my pattern design. So I've come up with a compromise. A classic prawn style spey fly, tied with all the traditional materials, but embellished with just enough flash and nastiness to make the fly really swim. This batch is tied on 1.5 AJs and should fish well under most winter conditions, but I think the pattern holds promise for summer runs as well if its tied on a smaller hook, particularly early in the season when the fish are bright and aggressive.

did someone say Jungle Cock?

Back to Life

Still shaking the crust off myself after fishing 9 of the last 12 days. Weather was cooperative, fishing was solid and life is good. All year I dream about these opportunities for fishing marathon, and generally they dont disappoint. That said, when you're out there, sleeping in your truck with the wet dog, waking at o'dark thirty to get first water, then fishing all day with no breaks, it can get pretty physically exhausting. At the end of these trips I'm always sore, haggard and completely glazed with the soulful satisfaction that only a long steelhead trip can provide. Besides that, things have been more than a little chaotic on the homefront lately so the trip provided some a much needed escape from the routine.

Rainsoaked hinterlands are just as I remembered them, although the conditions, and duration of the trip didnt afford me the opportunity to fish all the water I'd been looking forward to revisiting from last year. A pulse of midweek water this week definitely put the fishing down substantially, but prior to that things were all fishing pretty good. Crowds were minimal the first two days but Friday was a Zoo.

Every year, as everyother river in the state of WA closes the crowding problems in the hinterlands seem to grow. This problem is further compounded by an explosion in guide pressure, promoting and internet bragging about "lip ripping huge numbers of massive chomers". More and more I think we need to move towards widespread implementation of a nofishing from boats regulation. It has worked on many of the more crowded Oregon Rivers and frankly the pressure on some of our coastal systems is getting to the breaking point. Depending on the year it seems likely that almost every fish in those rivers is caught at least once and territorial males, which tend to hold for long periods waiting for spawning opportunities may be caught dozens of times. 10 trailers at most launches is now routine, even on a Wednesday.

Even the lonely, fly swinging hermit occasionally finds a fish. got this one out of a nice boulder garden. Even sweeter, picked it out of a gear boats pocket.