Anyway, that’s all about to change. I begin my autumn guiding schedule in earnest this week. Fortunately, things look good. The Hoh is in great shape and there are good numbers of steelhead around. We also expect rain this week, and it should kick the Quillayute rivers back into life without knocking out the Hoh and Queets. I’m looking forward to it.

So this is basically a long-winded way of saying “I’m back.” Also, the fall newsletter will be out soon, but not on the first. It’ll probably be up about the middle of September.

The nicest thing about those fish is that the fly that took them is from my “Lily’s Fly Box” project. Since my yellow Lab, Lily, died, I have been filling an old Perrine box with wet flies and streamers that all contain at least one material that she retrieved. I tie two of each pattern, one fly for the box, which I will keep on my desk when it’s full, and another to fish. In this case, the hackle on the Royal Coachman streamer is grouse flank feather instead of the traditional hackle. More bizarrely, Lily was also responsible found the peacock herl on the body. That’s a long story, but basically my wife, Eliana, and Lily were hiking along the Dosewallips River a few years ago, and Lily found a dead peacock. I have no idea how the peacock got into the woods, quite a ways from the nearest dwelling. But my wife has been married to a fly fisherman for a long time and, to her eternal credit (and utterly out of character for her) she brought home a few of the largest tail feathers.

Earlier in the week, David and I spent a few hours on the middle Sol Duc. I fished my 8-weight single-handed rod, thinking about steelhead, while David fished a 5-weight, more realistically looking for cutts. We ended up catching a few 10- to 12 inch sea-runs. David caught his on a Lady Caroline. Mine hit a Gray and Orange. It’s the precursor to the Orange Heron, developed by Syd Glasso in the 1950s. The only real difference is that it has a grizzly body hackle rather than heron. You can find the recipe for it by using the “search” function on the other side of my blog page.

For me, this has definitely been a “cutthroat summer” and not much of a summer steelhead season. I suspect that’s about to change. The vine maple is already turning on the river bottoms, and the Hoh dropped into really nice color this weekend. I really don’t want the summer to end–we really haven’t even had one–but if anything can make up for no tomatoes and the depressing winter pallor everyone in Forks has this summer it will be late summer/early fall dry line steelhead.

Incidentally, the Hoh has come into reasonable shape for fly fishing, at least the upper river. I have been spending a lot of time on it lately–not fishing, though. My wife and I take Ruby, our new Lab pup, down there every couple days. We let her play and swim around the sloughs. I have seen a few fly fishers and I did part of a clinic on it today. The Quillayute Rivers are still low and could use a nice jolt of rain. I would definitely hit the Hoh or Queets if you want to river fish.

By the way, someone asked me why I haven’t been posting about the Elwha. Well, it’s still much higher than I like. It was running around 1,300 cfs yesterday, and I don’t really fish it until its in the 900 range.

I spoke at the South Sound Fly Fishers last week. As always, it was an informed and welcoming group. It’s nice to look out and recognize so many faces.

I think this week I will finally get to the salmon and red-tail fishing in the salt. But hiking up to a lake also sounds good. It’s hard to believe, but within a month or so, we could get the first snow in the high country. I don’t want to think about it.

I would recommend saltwater, but the cutt fishing has been slow on the East Side beaches, and I haven’t heard any good reports about salmon on the western Strait of Juan de Fuca. Despite that, there is a good tide sequence on a beach that occasionally holds salmon late next week. I plan on getting up real early one of those days. I’m also heading back down to Kalaloch for perch this week.

I’m going to hit the Sol Duc tomorrow morning. It’s time to try a Lady Caroline on greased line.

I spoke to the Olympic Fly Fishers in Edmonds before our trip. They are a great group, and I had a good time. I will be giving a slide show talk for the South Sound Fly Fishers in Olympia next Tuesday, the 20th. It will be on the fly fishing opportunities on the Olympic Peninsula in August and early autumn.

I still have a couple slots open for my “Introduction to Olympic Peninsula Fly Fishing” weekend clinic on July 30, 31 and August 1. We will spend time on Admiralty Inlet beaches for saltwater cutts, the Elwha and West End steelhead and cutthroat rivers. I also have openins for the August 18 “All About the Elwha” clinic. There are more detailed descriptions of the clinics in the Summer Newsletter.

I have a new article, “Cutts Both Ways,” in the current issue of American Angler. It profiles and contrasts the saltwater cutthroat fishing on the northeast side of the Olympic Peninsula and the river fisheries on the West End. It has a nice selection of saltwater and freshwater flies, including patterns tied by Jeffrey Delia, Bob Triggs, Curtis Reed and Dick Wentworth.

I spent the morning with friends fishing for red-tailed surfperch north of Kalaloch–and actually got one for a change. When I got home, I had an email from Van Egan’s niece saying that he passed away earlier today. I never met Van but I did talk to him on the phone a couple times. He was very helpful when I was trying to get information about Haig-Brown’s trips to the Olympic Peninsula in the 1950s. I really like his books, especially TYEE, Rivers of Salt and his most recent book, the superb Shadows of the Western Angler. His articles for Fly Lines, the newsletter of the British Columbia Federation of Fly Fishers, are also wonderful, and I have printed many of them and refer to them often. Having Haig-Brown for a friend and neighbor, enjoying some of the West Coast’s grandest fishing  in both fresh and salt water during its glory days, writing important and finely crafted books, and working passionately to protect the natural resources of his adopted country–it’s hard to imagine a finer life for an outdoorsman and writer. Rest in peace, Van. You will be missed.

Well, I’ve fished a couple times this week but have yet to connect with a steelhead. I hiked into a spot I like on the Calawah on Tuesday. Seeing that the river was even lower than I thought, I waded upstream through a really nasty rock garden to a nice little stretch below an island. By the time I got there I was soaking wet with sweat and my legs were wobbly. I fished a Gray and Orange very deliberately down the the entire run without a touch. When I was done, I decided to climb up out of the “canyon” rather than wade back downstream. The top of the bluff was about 40 feet up, the bottom half rocks and the top vegetation. I wasn’t sure I could do it, but by kicking my boots into the clay for footholds and hanging onto ferns, I managed it without mishap. It saved me a lot of time.

Today, I spent about three hours on the Bogachiel. I started with the Gray and Orange and sinking polyleader again, and immediately got two large smolts and one of the “resident” rainbows that are increasingly common in the lower river. It was pretty feisty, even with my 8-weight switch. It was about a foot long, very bright and acrobatic. After that, I tried waking a Greased Liner for a while, with no bumps. As seems to often be the case in June, it was only of interest to juvenile fish too small to even hook themselves. I went back to wet flies and sinking leaders, fishing a Quillayute, again without a touch. I finished the day with a Black GP.

I’m going to try somewhere different tomorrow. I’ll let you know how it goes.

My wife and I recently bought a book, Olympic Peninsula from the Air, that shows scores of fantastic aerial shots of the region’s most beautiful and interesting landscapes. It’s divided into five sections: 1) Hood Canal and the East Olympics; 2) The Rainshadow and Dungeness River; 3) The Strait of Juan de Fuca and Elwha River; 4) The North Olympic Coast and Hoh River; and 5) The South Olympic Coast and Quinault River. From the backcountry lakes to the coastal rivers and rainshadow beaches, nearly all of these photos bring back vivid memories. And, more often than not, the memories have a fly rod in them.

You don’t have to be a fly fisher to enjoy the photos, of course. The Olympic Peninsula is a staggeringly beautiful place, with an almost unbelievable variety of habitats and ecosystems. But the truly unique thing about this remote and watery outpost is that fish, usually wild fish, live in nearly every corner of it. And for many of the destinations depicted in these photos, summertime is either the best time–and often the only time–you can fish for them.

In the Hood Canal section, there is a great shot of Upper Lena Lake, the place where my wife and I took our first backpacking trip together, and where feisty rainbow hit midge and scud patterns. The shot on the opposite page shows the Mildred Lakes, one of the best places in the Olympics to have a shot at 15-plus-inch mountain trout. But there are also tantalizing photos of some of my favorite summer and early autumn cutthroat waters, the  estuaries of Hamma Hamma, Duckabush and Dosewallips and the smaller beaches between them. (more…)

Hiking boots aren’t considered essential gear by many fly fishers. And if you spend most of your time fishing from boats or along saltwater beaches, you probably don’t spend a lot of time in boots. But the Olympic Peninsula contains nearly 900 miles of maintained hiking trails, the majority of which lead to mountains lakes or streams. Moreover, private timberlands encompass vast swaths of the peninsula’s low and mid-level elevations,  virtually all of it honeycombed by logging roads. Many of these roads have been gated in recent years to prevent timber theft, dumping and vandalism. The only way to reach the steelhead rivers, kettle lakes, and beaver ponds behind the gates is to hike. (more…)

However, if I had to chose a single older volume that is most helpful in terms of technique and presentation for steelhead fishing–without concerning myself with the craft of its writing or its narrative quality–it would be Greased Line Fishing for Salmon. It’s not that the book is poorly written. It simply is very technical, nearly to the exclusion of the storytelling that enlivens many of the finest older books.

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