Doug Rose Flyfishing

It was great seeing so many familiar faces at the Olympic Peninsula Fly Fishing Exposition in Port Townsend last week. I especially liked talking to my saltwater cutthroat buddies, Ron Hirschi and George Binney. According to them, it was a pretty grim winter for cutthroat fishing at all of our usual places. However, the chum fry are finally out, and beach fishing should pick up soon.

Speaking of cutthroat, I will be doing a saltwater cutthroat clinic at Waters West in Port Angeles on Saturday, April 12. This is an all day event. We begin at the shop with a slide show, tackle discussion, and demonstration by Curt Reed of several productive Olympic Peninsula saltwater cutt patterns, including Jeffrey Delia’s fantastic Delia’s Conehead Squid. Then we move out to several beaches after lunch to learn about reading the water, different types of habitats, and presentation. The clinic costs $50.  (more…)

The longer I examine them, the more amazed I am by the elegance and interconnectedness of Olympic Peninsula creatures and their surroundings. One of the most compelling for early spring fly fishers is that between sea-run cutthroat, chum salmon fry, and the spring sun.

Each year, usually in March, sea-runs that have wintered in freshwater drop down to tidewater. Shortly after that, chum salmon fry emerge from the gravel in the lower rivers. Unlike coho and steelhead, which rear for more than a year in the river, chum drift quickly downstream to the estuaries.

These movements coincide with the beginning of the “green up” that occurs when more daylight and a higher sun angle trigger plankton blooms in nearshore waters.

The phytoplankton feeds the zooplankton, and the zooplankton feeds the chum. Cutthroat, ravenous from the thin larder of the headwaters, prey on the 1- to 2-inch fry. (more…)

The most fun I had writing my new book was interviewing and getting to know Dick Wenworth. A Forks native, who has fly fished the rivers, lakes and beaches of the Olympic Peninsula’s West End for more than half century, Dick is best known as a steelheader and Syd Glasso’s most well known and talented Spey fly tying protege. The Jack Datisman painting of the steelhead about to intercept a fly at the Forks Thrifway represents the 21-plus-pound fish that Dick caught on a fly he tied in tribute to his mentor, the Mr. Glasso. However, Dick fishes and ties flies for everything from surf perch to Beardslee rainbows to coho salmon. Dick was incredibly generous with me, letting me return again and again to his home, providing flies, and loaning me treasured slides of him and Glasso on the water.

Here are some excerpts from my interview. They are in slightly different form than they will appear in the book.

Dick’s Fly Tying Heritage–”My dad, Bill Wentworth caught a spring Chinook on a number 6 Royal Coachman Bucktail from the Sand Rock Hole in the Sol Duc in the 1930s. It was in June or July and the fish weighted 15 pounds. He didn’t know what it was at first. He also used to fly fish the upper Sol Duc in July during the 1950s. My uncle, Glen, ‘Mickey,’ Merchant, packed Montana Black-Spotted Cutthroat into the mountains. He fished for cutthroat in the summer. He usually used a number 4 or 5 nickle/copper spinner and bullhead meat. He called it the ‘meat axe.’ But he had a Granger fly rod and fished flies for cutthroat once in a while. He’d fish a Royal Coachman with a Mosquito dropper. He mostly fished the Calawah. It was our home river.” (more…)

SPRING STEELHEAD ARE DIFFERENT

They may be called winter steelhead by the fish managers, but the bulk of the wild steelhead that return to Olympic Peninsula rivers now appear in March and April. It wasn’t always that way. Numerous reports have shown that historically more steelhead returned to coastal rivers during December and January.

Brian MacLachlin presented a paper about it to the Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission years ago, Dick Goin has also documented it, and the chapter “Ghosts” in my book, Color of Winter, also talks about the decline of the early wild runs. Most telling of all, the Quileute Indian word for December is “Beginning of Steelhead Spawning” and January is “Peak of Steelhead Spawning.” (more…)

I sure am having a lot of problems with the newsletter since I put online. I finally finished it yesterday and was ready to post, but it wouldn’t save. I kept trying all afternoon, but it just kept kicking back saying there was no internet connection or something. I tried it again this morning, and it looked like it worked, but when I checked on what had been saved it was, if you can believe this, the first two paragraphs of the first page. The rest was computer symbols and stuff I don’t recognize, plus a bunch of names. Anyway, I will get the newsletter out somethime this week, but I am going to have to re-type it all from the hard copy draft. I have some fishing dates, plus I’ve got to finish the index for my new book and get it back to the publisher. But you should see it by Friday. I  apologize to anyone who was  looking for it yesterday as I promised. It’s hard to believe that the newsletter worked much better when it was hard copy and I mailed them to you.  

                                                          IT’S NEWSLETTER WEEK

I will be posting the Spring Newsletter this weekend. Those of you who have signed up will receive an email notice, but everyone can see it by simply checking the blog page. It should be up by Sunday evening. This time, I’ll talk about the different approaches to spring steelhead, the Olympic Peninsula’s other springtime fishing options, and there will be a short interview with Spey fly master and steelheader, Dick Wentworth. I will also have a new essay on fishing for saltwater cutthroat during the chum fry migration, and there will be a couple of fly recipes.

I spent the afternoon yesterday poking around on the Upper Quinault. The mainstem reach near the upper bridge is still inaccessible because of damage on both the north and south shore roads. If you are will to hike, you can fish the water below the gates. I talked to a ranger last weekend, and he told me that if things go according to schedule, the North Shore Road should be open by the 15th. I didn’t fish yesterday, just hiked around, and tried to see how much things have changed over the winter. The Upper Quinault can be very good in March, but the lake is full of silt and sediment, and the lower river is completely blown out and has been for weeks. So I don’t know if the steelhead are migrating upstream into the upper river yet or not. Curiously, I saw a bunch of large steelhead, rolling and boiling, just above the Highway 101 bridge a couple weeks ago.

From what I hear, people are doing a little better on steelhead, especially on the Sol Duc and Hoh. I haven’t caught a fish since my last post, but I haven’t really fished for them seriously. Instead of fishing, I have been hiking into all of my favorite spring spots–in particular, places I haven’t fished this winter–and making sure they weren’t blown away during the December and January storms. I’ve lost a couple more holes, but my favorite drift on the lower Hoh looks prettty much the same as it did in October. The Quillayute River tributaries–the Sol Duc, Calawah and Bogachiel–don’t move around and change as much as the glacial rivers, but the paths through the woods can become utterly impassable with blow down.

I hope you can make it to the Olympic Peninsula Fly Fishing Exposition on the 22nd. I will do two slide shows–one on “Rain Forest Cutthroat/Rain Shadow Cutthroat” and the other on “Steelhead on the Fly.” I will have a booth and will be there when I’m not doing a show.