Doug Rose Flyfishing

I’ve been working on the Summer Newsletter, scouting new ways into some very lightly fished summer-run water, and putting in a garden. But I don’t have much to report in the way of fishing. I did a cutthroat clinic at Indian Island last week, and the fish didn’t put much effort into making an appearance. A friend and I also tried to fish the surf north of Kalaloch last week. Tried is the opperative word, because the surf wasn’t particularly high, but the tempo of the waves made it impossible to control your line. I have also been fishing the lower Sol Duc for spring Chinook, with the usual amount of success. I have heard that a few summer steelhead have been taken, but not enough to make you go very far to try for them. 

I cannot wait for the summer opener, which isn’t until the 6th this year. By then, I’m sure the first good early pulse of hatchery fish will be in the lower Bogachiel, Calawah and Sol Duc. I’ve scouted up a bunch of new floating line water, and I am chomping at the bit to get at it with a Greased Liner or Lady Caroline. Over the years, I have done well in June.

The Summer Newsletter will contain the usual seasonal overview, along with essays on ”Olympic Peninsula  Steelhead on the Floating Line” and “Nine Ways to Look at a Beaver Pond, ” (with apologies to Wallace Stevens).  It will also contain some new flies.

I’ll be at the Fourth Corner Fly Fishers in Bellingham on Thursday.  

I still have a couple spots open for my All Around the Islands cutthroat beach fishing clinic next Tuesday. See the details  on the previous blog post below. 

I suppose by now most of you have discovered the WDFW has changed the river opener from June 1 to the first Saturday in June. That will be on the 6th this year. I have read that the impetus for this is to protect migrating smolts. That is preposterous on its face. The average number of extra days each year that the smolts will be afforded protection by this rule is 4. That should really turn things around. I’m sure it will more than make up for the fact that people can kill wild adult fish, many only weeks from spawning, on all the major West End rivers managed by the WDFW. It will also doubtlessly make up for all the wild Chinook, coho and steelhead smolts that are incidentally killed by anglers, many of them fishing bait, in March and April on the lower portions of these rivers. It will also certainly eliminate concerns about the incidental loss of smolts to salmon and steelhead anglers on the Sol Duc and Quillayute, which are open through May, and the lower Hoh, which opens next week. Interestingly, I haven’t talked to a single person who likes or believes this change will accomplish anything.

The thing that rankles me the most about the change is that a couple of friends and I will now have to wait until June 6 to fish our favorite beaver ponds. In case you’re wondering, the ponds are above impassable barriers, and have absolutely no migratory fish. So we will lose nearly a week of fishing this year out of a five month season for absolutely no reason.

                       ALL AROUND THE ISLANDS

I still have openings for my May 19, “All Around the Islands,” cutthroat clinic on Indian and Marrowstone islands. Unfortunately, an angler left me a message Thursday or Friday wanting to sign up, but the power went out before I wrote his phone number down and I lost the message. So if that was you and you still want to sign up, give me another call or email me. There is room for two more people. The class basically consists of us fishing together, with a variety of lines, flies and presentations on a number of beaches. Participants get to see how I approach the fishery and ask questions. The cost is $60 and the class is limited to 6.

                             An end . . . and a beginning

Well, the Calawah, Bogachiel, Dickey and the section of the Sol Duc above the Sappho Salmon Hatchery closed last week. Although you can still fish the lower Sol Duc and Quillayute, the 2008/09 winter steelhead season is effectively over. Indeed, a friend of a friend caught a hatchery steelhead on the lower Sol Duc last week, and its eggs were barely visible–in other words, it was a summer-run!

For me and most people I know, the season ended with more of a whimper than a bang. I didn’t catch anything the last couple of times I fished alone, and I guided a very good steelheader Monday and Tuesday, and he only got one definite tug. The West End rivers were extremely low last week, so low that we couldn’t fish some of my best springtime drifts. The Calawah was 450 cfs and the Sol Duc was only about 850. That makes it very tough even when there are plenty of fish around–and there weren’t.

I did give the Calawah one more shot the day before the season concluded. I hiked into a sweet little run that virtually no one fishes. To reach it, you walk down a gated road for a while, then through a big clearcut, and finally heel and scoot down a steep bank. I wasn’t expecting a steelhead but I took my 8-weight Deer Creek Switch rod anyway. For the first time in a long time, I fished a floating tip on my AFS and a drab, buggy looking Spey-fly.

As I said, I wasn’t really thinking I’d connect with a steelhead, and I didn’t. But on about my 10th cast I got a sharp strong pull. I could see the fish clearly as it rolled. It was about the size of the jack steelhead we saw a lot of this year, but I was pretty sure it was a cutthroat. It fought hard, especially considering the size line and rod I was using. Indeed, it would have been a barn burner on a 5-weight. I got it up close several times before I could release it. It was a good 16 inches, with pepper-spotting on its flanks, purple gill plates and the eponymous crimson throat slashes. It was a male, and it had either finished spawning and had mended or hadn’t spawned yet, because it was solid and bright and definitely full of zip.  

That seemed like a fine ending to the winter season and a hopeful augury for the upcoming cutthroat and summer run fishery. So I went home without trying for another fish.

The next day my friend, David, and I drove over to Hood Canal and fished my two favorite beaches. David got a nice resident coho and had another one on for a while, but neither of us connected with a cutthroat. Which is odd, because the tide was good, a long slow morning run-out, and there were lots of chum fry in the shallows. Oh well, we had a great time, and ran into my old friend, George Binney. George is an outstanding saltwater cutthroat fly fisher, and I have two of his dressings in my new book, as well as in the “fly” section of the Spring Newsletter.

This week I’m fishing for springers and surf perch.