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Due to the recent river closures and the overall lack of steelhead, I ventured off to Eastern Washington for the weekend.
Thursday, January 9th 2003
Rocky Ford, Washington
Fished Rocky Ford for the first time today. Arrived in the morning to find only two other cars there. Not knowing quite what to expect, I walked down to the water full of anticipation. Clumsily I squished up to the edge, and spooked a large trout sitting right in front of me. I forced myself to slow down and stalk carefully up to the edges.
I continued to work my way downstream and to spook everything scaly I could find, and ten fly rig changes later, I finally arrived at some likely looking water containing a large concentration of these oversized triploids.
The action was steady throughout the afternoon, and despite the excessive fatigue caused by working all night, driving three hours, and fishing in the bitter cold, I managed a few fish. Two fish were lost to close encounter with the weed kind. I LDRed on finned creature that I was convinced was a porpoise until I remembered that porpoises don't have red on they're sides. The overall tally of fish landed was four, the smallest being eighteen inches measured, and the largest in the 21-22" range.
I love spring creeks, and combined with the weight gaining abilities of these triploid rainbows, I was highly impressed. What a magical little creek!
Friday, January 10th 2003
Yakima River, Washington
Started out fishing above the Canyon in some previously unexplored water. The area looked very fishy, but I was unfortunately unable to entice anything to my double nymph rig.
Around mid-day I drove down to the canyon. The water was slightly off-color and a few inches higher than my last visit, but certainly not unfishable. I fished a double nymph rig all day and landed 6 rainbows, a massive whitefish, and LDRed one rainbow in the 17" range. Just before dark I fished a large bunny leech in some deeper holes probing for a big rainbow, but couldn't find one. Breaking ice out of the guides got a bit old, but it's better than sitting at home...
Saturday, January 11th 2003
Yakima River, Washington
Tyler dropped me off in the canyon in the morning as he had a meeting. By the time he had returned, I had landed five rainbows. Fishing a double nymph rig, they seemed to prefer the size 24 brassie the most. Two of the fish I caught were cutthroat, or more likely cuttbows, without the slash. The spots were very large and the fish were exceedingly beautiful.
The day was much warmer than the previous, and ice on the guides thankfully wasn't an issue. Tyler came down to meet me after his meeting, and we continued fishing in the same area. He landed five rainbows, all of them on the same brassie.
Just before dark we ventured to a slower section of the river in search of a midge hatch. The midge hatch was just starting when the wind blew in and killed the rises. Partly for this reason and because of the difficulty in tying on size 22 midge dry flies with 6x tippet when your hands don't work, we switched to streamers and started prospecting the water.
After my twentieth cast I lost my patience with streamer fishing and switched back over to nymphs, this time a size 6 Kaufmann's Stone and a size 24 brassie off the back of it. Thought that was an interesting combination, but it worked and I landed three more fish for a total of 8 trout for the day. What a great way to spend a day!
Sunday, January 12th 2004
Tyler caught one small brown, and I caught three unidentified trout on a dry, with the weirdest spot patterns I've ever seen. They looked almost leopard like in the spot pattern, or maybe tiger like? That was my first thought, but the trout had no vermiculation marks on them.
Ryan Davey worldanglr
Calling Fly Fishing a hobby is like calling Brain Surgery a job. - Paul Schullery
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