Doug Rose Flyfishing

It’s beginning to feel like fall on the West End of the Olympic Peninsula. The angle of the sun is lower, and the light has that softer, streaky, more diffuse feel. The vine maple along the river banks has turned crimson in many places, and the fireweed is dying back. There’s a lot less daylight than there was two months ago, and the water has cooled some. I haven’t heard an elk bugle yet, but I expect to any day.

The West End rivers are still very low, especially the Quillayute System rivers, which are at record lows in some instances, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t catch fish. 

A client, a very good fisherman, caught a nice 8-plus-pound summer coho on the Quillayute last week. A wild buck, its inital run was at least 80 yards, then it fought long and hard. I got into my first good bunch of sea-runs on the lower Bogachiel last week. And the Hoh has been kicking out summer steelhead, cutthroat and the incidental bull trout.

Things will definitely improve after a good rain. “Look for the first big rise in September,” my friend Dick Wentworth always says about cutthroat fishing. But we don’t have anything to complain about when every day brings the chance of summer steelhead, summer coho and sea-runs. 

The best fishing with a fly rod on the Olympic Peninsula this week is for coho in the salt. The West End rivers are back about where they were a couple weeks ago–the Quillayute System is too low and clear and the Hoh is rising with the hot weather. A few steelhead were taken last week in the glacial rivers, which cleared up quicker than I thought they would after the rain last Monday, and even the Calawah, which really didn’t come up that much after the storm. I hiked into a drift I like on the lower Calawah last week and was surprised at how little difference the rain made. There are summer steelhead, cutthroat, and summer coho in the Sol Duc and Quillayute mainstem, but we really need a big push of water to kick things into high gear. For now, if I were interested in anadromous fish in West End rivers, I would head to the Queets, which has been running clear nearly all summer. If wanted trout, I’d fish the Elwha. Otherwise, fish for coho in the salt.

                       WE’RE BACK IN BUSINESS

It rained a little Saturday, sprinkled off and on yesterday, and today it’s been raining all day, sometimes hard. The long drought is over, and it’s time to fish for steelhead and cutthroat again. Actually, the Hoh cleaned up last week; I got a small bull trout and lost a larger one on the upper river, but didn’t rise a steelhead. The rain has brought the glacial rivers up, but as of yesterday the Hoh was still clear. There are also good numbers of summer coho in the Quillayute, and schools of fish were flashing through the riffles today. The rising water will also bring in fresh  steelhead and cutts into the Sol Duc, Calawah and Bogachiel and turn on the fish that have been logy. This is what we’ve been waiting for for weeks. I have Thursday and Friday open if anyone is interested. It’s finally time for the dry lines.