Doug Rose Flyfishing

When I used to fish with Chris Bellows out of Neah Bay, the ostensible target of our angling was always coho salmon. As the proprietor of Top Water Charters, Chris was an expert at finding salmon and getting you one on a fly rod. I’ve had the most fun salmon fishing and caught the most and the largest coho of my life with Chris. But it used to drive him batty when half way through the day, I would say, “Maybe we ought to go catch some rockfish.” If salmon were around and you could reach them, they were what Chris wanted to catch.
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Reading the Water for Saltwater Salmon—

Ron Hirschi is a fisheries biologist and veteran Olympic Peninsula fly fisherman. He grew up in Port Gamble and fished for salmon and cutthroat from his own row boat by the time he was 10. His fisheries research has focused on the distribution and timing of juvenile salmon and forage fish in Hood Canal and Admiralty Inlet, and on the critical role drift cells play in habitat creation and maintenance for salmonids. Although he has been a fly fishermen since high school—and fishes for sea-runs and all trout exclusively with flies—he prefers to beach fish for salmon with herring. He fishes Marrowstone Point nearly nightly when the salmon season is underway.

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In Les Johnson’s wonderful early book, Sea-Run, he tells a story about running into an older fly fisherman on the Quinault River. Les was just beginning his long and celebrated journey as a fly fisherman then and, despite the presence of cutthroat in the river, he was having trouble getting them to bite. The older man eventually asked to see Les’s flies. He complimented Les on his efforts but told him that number 6s were too large for the Quinault’s clear summer water. Then he opened his battered fly box and gave Les three small flies. They were a Spruce, a Chappie, and a Royal Coachman Bucktail tied with a dark wing and on a small double hook. Les began to catch fish.

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