Floated from Umtanum to Squaw Creek yesterday with Luke from Worley Bugger in Ellensburg and my frind Lisa who was a beginner at the start of the day and a pretty good fly fisher by the end of the day. In a word the fishing was EXCELLANT. The BWOs started coming off the river at around 10:00 a.m. and continued throughout the day and fish were coming up for them almost everywhere we went. I spent most of the day fishing a #16 Adams Parachute with a #16 or #18 BHPT emereger on the dropper and got about 1/3 on top and 2/3 on the dropper. We did hit some finiky fish who didn't like the #16 and were holding out for #20s but for the most part it took the fish. The other thing that worked was swinging soft-hackles in the riffles though this tended to pick up smaller fish. Lisa fished a MadamX with BHPT dropper and just didn't get fish on top but got a lot on the dropper so if you don't like having to find a small dry/indicator then you could easily give up on the topwater action.
Best holes - the Smiley Face wall and the other big wall further downstream. These two spots brought most of the big fish for the day. I got 3 fish at the first wall, two 16" bows and one 14" one. At the second wall I landed a very strong 16" fish, Lisa lost a big one then she got 3 more, the biggest was another stout 16" fish. We got a few big ones throughout the river but these runs really held them. Other than that the ends of riffles were big fish producers. Fairly big fish were coming out of only 1' of water in the riffles and when we stopped for lunch I got 3 fish out of a riffle that was 1' deep and the size of a hot tub so the fish are pretty much everywhere. We lost count of total fish but I got a lot of 10-13" fish, probably 4-5 14" fish and four 16" fish for the day, also lost several big fish and more than a few average fish. My partner got a lot of the smaller fish, a few 14" fish and the one 16" fish, also loosing a few bigs ones and lots of the normal ones. We didn't get many really small fish but they were downing our flies in some of the slower water. I also got one really big whitefish and had a few others on keeping to my recent pattern of having my biggest fish of the day always being a whitefish. The canyon is hot right now so call in sick and get out before the weekend hoards descend on it. I doubt this is gonig to last much more than a week. The canyon is totally wadable too which is good, it looks like a real trout stream now with riffles and pools instead of looking like the usual big irrigation ditch of summer. Tim
