Doug Rose Flyfishing

Well, first off, I want to apologize for screwing up my blog last week. I wrote it, but my wife and I were moving, and I forgot to post it. Fortunately, conditions out here haven’t changed much since my last blog, and the fishing options are pretty much the same. I have been fishing the same places–West End rivers and creeks–and for the same species I always do this time of year, summer steelhead, sea-run cutthroat and early-timed coho. So I’m just going to combine the two posts. As for the move, we now live a couple miles from the Queets and Clearwater rivers. Do I have to say that I’m very happy about it?

 Quillayute System

Although we have had a few spurts of rain lately–and a major system is moving in from the coast as I write this–they haven’t done much to the water levels in the Sol Duc, Bogachiel and Calawah. The nights are longer and the days are cooler, however, and that will bring down the water temperature whether it rains or not. That’s good for fly fishing, because trout and steelhead that are already in the rivers will be more responsive and move farther to the fly in cooler water. The upper Sol Duc was 56 degrees the other day, and the lower Calawah was just under 60. The storm system blowing in right now should pull fresh cutts, steelhead and coho into all the rivers. Meanwhile, hatchery steelhead in the lower Bogachiel and Calawah have been hot one day, with multiple hook-ups, then stone cold the next. Fewer hatchery steelhead are released into the Sol Duc, and they have been scarce. However, sea-run cutthroat is improving on the lower Sol Duc and Bogachiel. Cutthroat fishing is always more consistent and predictable on the Quillayute System in autumn than steelheading, especially in the reaches downstream of Highway 101 on the Bogachiel and Calawah and below the Sappho hatchery on the Sol Duc. There are still some summer coho in the Sol Duc, but as usual they are tough to entice to a fly. October Caddis are over the rivers during late afternoon now, and Waters West’s Curt Reed has taken a Calawah summer run and Sol Duc cutts on the Septober Caddis that was featured in the Fall Newsletter. I have also seen Blue-Winged Olives over the water lately, as well, and if you want a challenge try to catch one of the large sea-runs that sip these tiny mayflies on calm pools on chilly mornings. As always, Spruce Flies, Knutsen Spiders and Royal Coachmen Bucktails (and feather wings) will also take cutts, and you don’t have to fish tippets smaller than 3X with them

Glacial Rivers–There is enough water in the lower Hoh to float a boat, but it is still low enough to wade in some places. I fished above Nolan Creek recently, and the river was in excellent shape, with a gray-green tint and good clarity. I didn’t raise a steelhead, but Dave Steinbaugh has gotten people into several lately and he turned a large Chinook last week. The Hoh seldom seems to have as many cutts as the Quillayute Rivers, but this weekend’s rain should bring more fish into the lower river. Summer steelhead, both hatchery and a few wild fish, are the main show above the Oxbow now, and anglers willing to get away from the roads can find great waking, skating and riffled-hitch water inside and outside of Ol;ympic National Park. You don’t see as many October Caddis on the glacial rivers as the Sol Duc or Calawah, but there will soon be enough to make fishing orange-bodied Greased Liners, Steelhead Caddis and Septober Caddis a good choice. The Queets is the closest river to our new place, and I’ve been fishing it in the afternoons when I’m finished writing. The early run of hatchery coho has yet to show in any numbers, although I’ve begun to see a few cars around the Salmon River bridge. I’ve been concentrating on the mainstem above Hartzell Creek, and have been getting mostly small cutthroat so far, other than the wild summer-run I caught a couple of weeks ago. The Queets was so low last week that I waded it just below the Hartzell Creek ramp. I anticipate the coming rain will change that. It should bring in the coho, more Chinook, as well as cutts and the odd summer steelhead. I haven’t been down to the upper Quinault since our move, but plan on it next week and will report on how I do.

Clearwater Tributary Cutthroat

Actually, I have been having the most fun lately fishing for resident and sea-run cutthroat on the Clearwater River tributaries. This is how I do it: Lily, our yellow Lab, and I hunt grouse along a different stretch of a tributary most mornings. I choose creeks that are big enough to have names and look for alder bottoms and other low gradient reaches. So far, we haven’t done squat on grouse, but we have found several shady pools and deep, snaggy corners. I’ve returned to several in the afternoon and have caught fish in two of them. The largest was 11 inches. All of them had a golden sheen and scarlet throat slashes that suggest they have been in the creeks for a while. They have liked Spruce Flies, Carey Specials with a green wool body, and soft hackles with yellow or orange silk bodies. It is simple fishing, but you have to cast accurately because most of the sweet spots are small and usually have some sort of obstruction. I basically just wade downstream on the shallow side, roll casting into the deeper water. Sometimes I retrieve the fly, other times I don’t. I usually only get a cast or two in each spot before the fish turn off. You could probably do this sort of fishing without a dog, but a retriever that wants to go hunting every morning is the best prod I know for exploring new water. 

                          Coastal Steelhead and Cutthroat

The “high water summer” that we experienced is definitely a thing of the past. All of the West End rivers are very low and clear now. The Quillayute rivers have been dropping since the Labor Day rain and are now at normal mid-September levels, although there is more water than last year at this time. The Rain Forest rivers–the Hoh, Queets and Quinault–are all actually running below normal. The Queets has been flowing between 500 and 600 cfs, a couple of hundred less than average for this time of year.    (more…)

West End Weekend, October 5-7, 2007–This seminar provides intensive instruction on summer steelhead and sea-run cutthroat fly fishing on the rivers of the Olympic Peninsula’s “West End.” It is designed for mid-level fly fishers who want to expand and refine their skills. For anglers unfamiliar with the West End, it also serves as an introduction to the celebrated coastal rivers–the Hoh, Bogachiel, Sol Duc and Calawah–during autumn. The seminar begins with an an optional hot dog roast near La Push on Friday evening, and anglers who arrive early can fish the lower Sol Duc, Bogachiel, Dickey and Quillayute rivers, which are within a few miles. Saturday morning focuses on the wet fly swing and floating line on the upper Hoh, then we move to the lower river and discuss sink-tips in the afternoon. We conclude the field portion of Saturday on the Bogachiel. After a break, we will meet near La Push Saturday evening for dinner and a fly tying and pattern discussion. Sunday morning we emphasize waking, skating and the riffled hitch on the Sol Duc, then move to the Calawah for an examination of the greased line. The seminar will conclude by 1pm on Sunday, giving anglers time to make late afternoon ferries. Cost–$400, includes Saturday dinner. Limited to 6. Accommodation referrals available.

                                   West End Cutthroat

I just got back from a long drive on the Olympic Peninsula’s  West End. From the Queets and Clearwater basin, where I spent the night, I passed Kalaloch and Cedar creeks, then Nolan Creek and the Hoh. The Bogachiel came next, followed by the Calawah, on the outskirts of Forks. Then there were  the five Sol Duc bridges, not to mention Lake and Bear      creeks.

The largest of these rivers are internationally famous for their winter steelhead, and this time of year many anglers travel to the peninsula for coho and Chinook salmon. However, the species that all of these bodies of water have in common, are sea-run cutthroat. They also return to the  Highway 112 rivers like the Hoko and Sekiu in September and the coast’s Goodman and Mosquito creeks, which drain into the Pacific Ocean without flowing beneath a paved road.

If you want to experience solitude and catch more than one fish a day, the West End’s sea-runs are the best thing going on the peninsula during September and early October.  Cutthroat are in all the major rivers right now, but the majority of the run doesn’t enter freshwater until after the first big rain in September. The fish in creeks don’t usually appear strongly until the rivers come up a bit.

Folks who live east of the Olympic Mountains might not be aware of it, but parts of the West End picked up a lot of rain on over Labor Day weekend. The Calawah, which had been running low and warm and super clear, rose quickly on Monday before dropping back down quickly the following day. It’s still a little higher than before, but the storm probably brought some fresh cutts into the lower end. The Queets spiked on the 3rd but dropped rapidly and is now  slightly below its normal flow for this time of year. The Hoh rose way up too and dropped fast, but it was still barely fishable Wednesday morning–at least for fly fishing.

All the sea-run cutthroat flies that work everywhere else work on the West End. However, Dick Wentworth, Syd Glasso’s great friend and protoge, fishes streamers more than most contemporary anglers, and he is one of the best and most avid cutthroat anglers I know. He particularly likes Haig-Brown patterns such as the Silver Brown and Silver Lady. Haig-Brown created them to imitate, respectively, juvenile salmon and juvenile trout, and cutthroat eat a lot of small fish in freshwater.  I already wrote in the Fall Newsletter about October Caddis and baetis for sea-runs this time of year.  

It’s pretty easy to figure out how to approach cutthroat in the West End’s major rivers. However, as Les Johnson noted in Flyfishing for Coastal Cutthroat, rivers like the Sol Duc have fewer classic cutthroat pools and slackwater areas than Puget Sound rivers. Instead, look for sea-runs near shoreline obstructions such as snags and cuttbanks. I also do well during autumn in soft water adjacent to the main flow and on the glassy deeper water on the inside of bends, which are called “corners” out here.

                                      Saltwater Salmon  

Apparently, the salmon in the Strait of Juan de Fuca can read calendars, because more silvers than pinks were caught at Sekiu on September 1. That is the first time that has happened since the humpies appeared, and both species are right on schedule. At Olson’s Resort, 26 coho and 221 pinks were recorded on August 27, and the numbers were 113 to 193 on the 31st. On September 1, anglers brought in 209 coho and 101 pinks. This is what fly fishers out here have been waiting for. Now we just have to see how many mornings will be fog-free enough to get out on the water. That is the early September problem.

Fly fishing from the beach for coho has tapered off at Marrowstone Point and remained poor at Point Wilson. However, Ron Hirschi says that a few pinks have been caught at Marrowstone recently, and some of them are larger fish. As usual, the herring anglers are doing best. A lot of fly fishers have been having trouble with short strikes. A few have begun fishing patterns with stingers or longer longer baitfish flies. ”There are some good-sized herring in the coho bellies,” Ron said. The season in Marine Area 9 remains open through September, and some of the largest coho of the season are taken in autumn. The numbers are low, though, and most of the big ones are wild.

The northern Hood Canal coho season outside of the early Quilcene/Dabob Fishery opened on the 1st of September. The big coho runs to rivers like the Dosewallips and Hamma Hamma are only memories today, but I have continued to have fun fishing the estuaries. However, the best silver fishing doesn’t usually happen until well after the opener, and it may continue into November. My method is to pick several creeks that have both sea-runs and coho, but that don’t have hatchery runs of silvers like the Quilcene or Skokomish. I fish the deltas and estuaries of these creeks for cutts through September and October. Usually, I begin seeing a few salmon by the end of the month. I fish a 7-weight and  soft hackle type flies like the Partridge and Green and Partridge and Orange. Hood Canal coho really seem to like green-bodied flies. A few years ago, I did really well on a Carey Special, of all things, with a hot chartreuse body, with gold rib. I release all of these fish, unless they are clipped.   

                                      The Elwha Report

The Elwha has been holding up well and turning out a few nice fish. My friend Curt Reed of Waters West has taken rainbows of 16 and 17 inches on the middle river, the reach between the dams, in the last week. Curt is primarily a dry fly man, and he has caught most of his larger trout on a local pattern, the Norm Wood Special. It is a golden stonefly imitation and is very effective the last hour or so before darkness, when the females are laying their eggs on the surface. 

Besides golden stones, which are beginning to taper off, I have encountered fair numbers of Hydropsyche caddis, as well as a new, cinnamon-bodied caddis that may be a Rhycophilla but I haven’t seen one up close. The trout seem to be keying in on the pupa of the smaller caddis as they rise from the bottom during the evening. Just the other night, I once again saw 12- to 14-inch rainbows hurling themselves out of the water just before darkness. This is classic “trout pursuing ascending caddis pupa” behavior. 

There are still a number of Yellow Sallies around in the evenings, although it seems they are primarily of interest to smaller fish. There are also quite a few termites in the air, and they are easy to mistake for golden stones, although  they are thinner and fly differently than caddis. I continue to see small mayflies in the evenings and think they are Pale Evening Duns.

I had my best day on the Elwha last week fishing a Muddler Minnow on a mended wet fly swing. I didn’t get anything big, but caught several 10- to 12 inchers in a couple of hours. I worked the smaller fork of a spot where the river splits around an island. Unlike many secondary channels like this, which have shallow water and few decent trout, this reach contains water three or four feet deep and plenty of bottom rubble and cobble. The water is slower than the larger fork, which is nearly a rapids, and it contains as many, if not more, insects. There are lots of places like this on the middle river, and they are all worth exploring.