Good day to all fellow flyfishers of Washington. I fished the Yakima River near Ellensburg yesterday. The river is running low compared to its usual flow for this time of year. That's great for me as I was wading. The river had more color to it than I would have hoped for, so visability was at best, probably 3 to 4 feet. I measured the water temp. at 55 degrees. I fished most of the day with a goldbead zugbug with a gold-ribbed hare's ear (GRHE) dropper. I used some split shot to get the rig down, with a chunk of Biostrike for an indicator. The first rainbow was taken on a cut bank. I was high sticking the rig down along the inside edge of the cut bank, when I saw a flash of silver below the water. I immediately lifted my rodtip and set the hook. The rainbow showed his muscle and made several runs down river with one nice leap in the air. He measured over 14 inches and had taken the GRHE. A mighty fine fish. It's funny what we perceive as a well-tied fly. I haven't tied any GRHEs since I first learned to tie a couple of years ago. So the flies I was using were from my early days of tying. I thought they looked horrible and had never used them. But the fish weren't nearly as particular: they loved them. Guess I'll tie more. Later in the afternoon, it appeared to be snowing on the Yak, but it was only the cottenwoods letting their seeds fly. White posted dry flies were out! I caught lots of what I think were salmon smolt ranging in size from 1.5 to 6 inches. I caught another 14 inch rainbow in a back flowing eddy using a lightning bug (tied with gold flash, instead of silver). It was the first fish I've ever caught sitting down on the bank of the river while flyfishing. I took a seat to retie flies after getting massively tangled, then just chucked the rig into the water while sitting. A light tap of the indicator signalled a take and the fight was on. After a good run, I knew I'd better stand up to play this fish out. It was a beautiful redsided bow! I missed several other fish in the pool as well as others along the way! Lots of kingfishers, flowers and other wildlife were out and about on the river. I saw several garter snakes, which reminded me to be careful where I stuck my hand when climbing the banks (for rattlers). As I stepped near the area where I'd seen the snake, the ground started seething garter snakes. 5 or 6 of them just stared slithering out of the ground. The last out was a healthy 13 or 14 inches and quite thick. It kind of gave me the heeby-geebies! I've never seen anything like that before. Just another reason to go flyfishing. Always something new out there. There were several hatches throughout the day of sulfer (yellow) mayflies and a great caddis hatch around 4 pm. The caddis were also laying eggs most of the afternoon. Even with all this activity, I only saw one or two rises to the surface, and they were small fish. I had no luck at all dry fly fishing. Hmmm........ So all in all, a great day to be out on the river. I'm looking forward to getting back out there. Rock and reel! Danny McMillin
