Doug Rose Flyfishing

Nothing much has changed out here since my last post. The rivers are still low and cold, the roads are icy at night and in the morning, and a few people are taking a few steelhead. It’s mostly natives now, but they seem on the small side so far. I haven’t fished at all this week, because I was Seattle for the fly fishing show for the weekend, and then, predictably enough, got a nasty cold a couple days after I got back home.

As my wife remarked, “You can fish all day in freezing rain and don’t get sick, but you go to the city and it happens almost  automatically.”

I really enjoyed the people at my two presentations and those who came by the writer’s table. It was also nice to spend some time with friends that I seldom get to see.

I will be doing a book signing next Saturday, February 21st, at Peninsula Outfitters in Poulsbo, and will be at Waters West in Port Angeles on March 7. You can get my new book at both of those shops, as well as at the Port Townsend Angler and the Avid Angler in Lake Forest Park. As I find out other shops that have it in stock, I will list them. I think it’s important to support local fly shops.

By the way, between book signings, springtime clinics, which I will detail in the spring newsletter in early March, and guided trips, I don’t have many open days left between now and mid-April. If you want to fish for steelhead or cutthroat in saltwater during the chum fry migration, give me a call soon.

I hope to get out tommow. Dick Wentworth told me earlier in the week a spot where a friend had seen several steelhead holding. It’s on one of my favorite pieces of water, one that doesn’t get much pressure. I’ll let you know how I do.

I got a nice 10 pound hen on the Calawah the other day. It was an especially welcome fish, because I was actually focusing more on scouting and playing around with different lines on my new Temple Fork Deer Creek Spey rod than I was fishing. It came from a pool that has intrigued me for a long time, but I had never figured how to get into it before on foot. 

Taking a fish from a new stretch of water, one that I had a hunch about and that takes some effort to reach–hiking through a devils-club-and-viscous-muck elk bottom and then heeling down a steep bank, in this case–is one of my very favorite things in steelheading. 

The river was very low, 40 degrees, and there were about three feet of visibility. The fish hit a black General Practitioner and I was fishing a Windcutter with a five foot cheater and seven foot length of T-14 attached to the second head. I hooked it in a soft little gut, about waist deep, between two long, slightly deeper sections of the pool.

I didn’t get anything on the Sol Duc yesterday. It was 41 degrees and had really nice color, although the shade of green it is running this winter is a little different than in the past. It looks almost glacial green at times, which makes me think something changed in the headwaters. I talked to a couple of guides who were fishing bait or rubber worms who  floated by and they hadn’t gotten anything either.

I spent about six hours on the upper Hoh today with a friend. It was in great shape–about three feet of visibility, 42 degrees–but we didn’t get a bite. Nor did very many other folks from what I could gather. There are fish in the system, though, and the nymphers and bait guys are taking some.

Oh yeah, the Upper Hoh Road is open again all the way to the campground.

I’m heading out to Seattle tomorrow for the Fly Fishing Show. I’ll be signing books Friday at 12, and doing a slide show on “Fly Fishing Opportunities on the Olympic Peninsula” at 2. On Saturday, I will have a slide show on “Rain Forest Cutthroat–Rain Shadow Cutthroat” at 10:30 and sign books at 1 pm. I hope to see some of you there.