Doug Rose Flyfishing

It sure was great finally getting back on the water yesterday. I wasted part of the day messing around with trying to have a tire repaired, then buying a new one, but I managed a few hours in the afternoon. I didn’t catch a fish, but I got a good, frankly savage, yank. It was very brief and I don’t have any real idea how big the fish was, but it felt like the kind of tug you get from a large aggressive wild male. I avoided both the Sol Duc and Bogachiel, where the overwhelming bulk of the pressure has been this week, and enjoyed complete solitude. I didn’t have any other bites, and the river was still a little higher than I like for swinging and wading.

The best part of my brief encounter with the steelhead  was that it hit a Syd Glasso dressing, an Orange Heron with a gadwall flank throat, tied on a size 1/0 hook. In fact, I fished Glasso Speys exclusively yesterday. As I wrote a couple weeks ago, there hasn’t been a lot to do in Forks during the recent high water except work on my duck hunting book and tie flies. I’ve filled several new fly boxes, one of them entirely with Glasso patterns–Sol Ducs, Sol Duc Speys, Sol Duc Darks and Glasso- style (feather wing) Polar Shrimp. My Spey flies are pretty sorry compared to artists like Dick Wentworth, John Shewey and Dave McNeese, but they have the right proportions and colors and don’t fall apart. I really love fishing for steelhead with flies that were created on West End rivers, especially Glasso Speys.

                                   Starting Over

Okay, we’ve got a little more rain coming in tonight and tomorrow, but after that it looks like we’re entering a fairly dry stretch. The rivers, which have been coming down all week and now have good color, may bump up a bit but should be in great shape for wading and swinging by midweek. After an unusually long stretch of terrible river conditions, it looks like we may finally have an extended period when we’ll be able to fly fish. 

It’s almost feels like a second beginning of the winter steelhead season. And the timing is fantastic, because late January and February are when we begin to see more big wild fish and the hatchery runs dwindle. I have already heard of three 20-plus-pound wild fish on the Quillayute rivers.

As recently as 10 years ago, the conclusion of the hatchery run also signaled the end of the big crowds on West End rivers. Unfortunately, the days when it was mostly locals on these rivers in February, March and April are now a faint memory. Indeed, we now get the bulk of the winter steelhead effort–at least from fly fishers–in late winter and early spring. And the closure of the Skagit/Sauk late season this year will only exacerbate the crowding. Fly fishing for winter steelhead on these beautiful rivers has become, I fear, an industry.

Oh well, as I said in my winter newsletter, I know how to get away from the armadas. I even have a bunch of new runs to concentrate on this season.   

Depending on what happens tonight, I’ll hit either a creek or one of the Quillayute rivers tomorrow. I’ll let you know how it goes. And from now on, I’ll post something every day or two. That is, as long as we don’t get very many more days with 5 inches of rain.

I know it’s a mistake to assume that everyone who reads this blog has at least a vague idea of the current weather on the West End. It’s also probably a mistake to assume that folks understand that when I don’t post for a while it is because the rivers haven’t been fishable. 

Nonetheless, I make both of these mistakes on a regular basis during the winter.

So let me be precise: I haven’t fished for two weeks because every time I have had a chance to the rivers have been badly out of shape, at least for the type of wading and swinging that I prefer.

Here are the rainfall numbers for between Friday the 8th of January and last Thursday, the 14th: 1/8–1.34 inches; 1/9–1.14; 1/10–.08; 1/11–5.38; 1/12–2.98; 1/13–1.68; 1/14–4.36. 

So far, we have had a total of 23.67 inches in January. That compares to an average of 9.69 for the period. We only had 8.25 inches in December.

We got another big pulse of rain and wind last night, as well. However, it wasn’t anywhere near as bad as early weather forecasts suggested it could have been.

Eliana and I took Lily, our yellow Lab, out to Rialto Beach this morning to look at the surf. It was pretty impressive. I bet some of the waves were 20 feet.

From the looks of the Bogachiel and Sol Duc at Leyendeckers, I wouldn’t count on fly fishing for a few days, at least. At least the long term forecast looks good.

As a result of the bad river conditions, I’ve been tying more flies. I’ve tied so many since the holidays, in fact, I had to buy two new fly boxes. Well, actually they’re old Perrine boxes, which I like and are becoming increasingly hard to get. I got them from Bob Gooding, at Olympic Sporting Goods in Forks.

Happy New Year everyone! I had planned to begin blogging regularly on steelheading after the holidays–not to mention guiding–but the big rain last Thursday and Friday knocked the rivers out yet again. We have had good numbers of fish this winter, including some nice wild steelhead, but the number of days when the conditions have been optimal for fly fishing have been fairly rare. That’s really not that unusual in Forks in early winter, of course, and we got a lot of new rain again yesterday, just as the rivers were coming down nicely. I hope to fish Friday. Maybe.

Meanwhile, I’ve been tying a lot of flies. I’m still working on my Spey flies, in particular Syd Glasso’s Sol Duc and his Spey version of the Polar Shrimp. I’m also still having my usual difficulties with the wings. I’ve also tied a few of James Garrett’s–another Olympic Peninsula fly tyer whom Trey Combs wrote about in Steelhead Fly Fishing–Red Shrimp. It’s in the vein of a G.P. but with more of a traditional steelhead upright-winged profile. I also like Waddington shanks and have tied up some Beauly Snow Flies and my own patterns. Finally, I’ve been tying a few soft hackle and traditional wet flies but substituting waterfowl flank feathers for the partridge and other upland bird feathers.

I’ll let you know when I get back on the water.

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. 
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