Doug Rose Flyfishing

I just got back from a little scouting run to the Hoh. It’s still a little higher and faster than I like, but the upper river is  definitely fishable and will be getting better each day. There are more fish in the lower river, of course, but you will also run into a lot more boats and folks that aren’t fly fishing. The entire Quillayute System is perfect right now. Just be careful on the roads because the shady spots stay icy late into the morning and beginning getting slick in late afternoon.

                MERRY CHRISTMAS FROM FORKS

Eliana and I hiked along the upper Sol Duc this afternoon, and it had great color but was still a little high for good fly fishing. It should be just right for wading and swinging, although a little colder than I prefer, after another night or two of this cold weather. Same thing with the Calawah and Bogachiel. I haven’t seen the Hoh for a while, but plan to check it out tomorrow. There are a bunch of hatchery fish in all the rivers. The fish checker told a friend of mine that she saw four different hatchery strains of steelhead in the Hoh last week–Quillayute System, Hoh, Queets (Salmon River) and Quinault. I also heard about a 24 pound wild fish taken in the Quillayute.

While I have been waiting for the rivers to drop back into good fly fishing shape, I have been tying a few flies. I am trying to tie at least a Spey fly, a shank fly, and a soft hackle every day. The other day, I had the opportunity to watch  my friend, Dick Wentworth, tie his great friend, Syd Glasso’s Sol Duc. It was a tremendous honor, made even more so by the fact that he told me he had never tied in front of anyone before. I learned a lot, including a few tricks and wrinkles that I have never heard before. But the best part was simply seeing how, with deft hands and sharp eye, he was able to transform inanimate objects into something that possesses grace and rhythm and seems almost alive. It also catches fish.

I saw my first out of state fly fishing guide’s rig–replete with all the hip tackle manufacturer’s decals– in Forks the other day. Whoopie! The bobber circus begins.

Well, this is going to be hard to believe, but I got a nice 8 or 9 pound winter steelhead on my first cast last Thursday. My fishing partner, David Christian, and I were on the Salmon River in Olympic National Park. It was the first time I had fished since the big rains knocked out the coho run in November.

So, in other words, I caught a winter steelhead on my first cast of my first trip of the season. I don’t expect that to ever happen again in this lifetime.  

I caught it swinging a pink bunny leech across the head of a tight little run. I made a roll cast to cover the water in front of me, and I actually saw the strike at the end of the swing. I was fishing a 10 foot, Type 6 tip on my TFO switch rod.

Catching the fish was great, but it was even more satisfying that it was a wild buck. Wild early-timed fish are rare on Olympic Peninsula rivers these days, especially on heavily planted winter rivers like the Salmon. But this fish had flawless fins and the big shoulders, peweter flanks, and touch of rose on its gill plates of an early wild buck. 

It’s the kind of fish I wrote about in the chapter called “Ghosts” in my book, The Color of Winter.” Dick Goin used to catch them on the upper Sol Duc in early December. And Department of Natural Resources fisheries biologist, Jeff Cederholm, described similar fish in the Clearwater in the 1970s. He observed that the early fish tended to be tributary spawners and that they came in “colored up,” while the wild mainstem spawners came in later and were bright.

We also saw a number of other anglers with bright hatchery fish that day. But I wouldn’t recommend a trip there right now. It’ll be very low and cold, and packed with gear fishermen. We went because we knew it would be low enough and clear enough to fish while we were waiting for the Hoh and Quillayute rivers to come back down. 

The first winter steelhead showed up at the Bogachiel Rearing Ponds’ outlet creek several weeks before Thanksgiving this year. Then the rains came.

I know that some of the folks who read this blog don’t live in the Pacific Northwest, and consequently may not have a keen grasp of what the weather has been like lately in the wettest corner of the lower 48 states. 

So let me just cite a few recent rainfall numbers for Forks.

We didn’t have any rain on November 3rd and 4th. Since then, we have had measureable rainfall every day until today. The following days had more than an inch–1.34 inches on the 5th, 1.42 inches on the 9th, 1.06 on the 10th.   We had 2.17 inches on the 15th and an unbelievable 3.85 on the 16th. The 17th had 1.72 inches, the 18th 1.44 and the 19th 4.37, (yes 4.37). The 20th received 2.19 inches, the 22nd 2.14, the 25th 1.23, and the 26th 1.55.  

That accumulates to more than 28 inches of rain for the month, and the numbers for the last four days aren’t recorded yet.  (more…)