Happy New Year!

Happy New Year everyone!! I got out on the Puget Sound yesterday for my first outing of 2010, to test out a new marabou prawn imitation that I came up with. It was an incoming tide, so I headed to a local estuary that has been fishing well lately. Upon arriving at the beach the wind was howling straight on shore, but that wasn't going to stop me so I went for it anyways. As it turned out, after about fifteen minutes on the water the wind started to die down so I was in business.

The beach

With the tide already well on its way in, the current was really moving so I started covering the water as I would swinging flies for steelhead, making a cast then continuing a couple of paces down the beach before casting again. I had covered about 100 yards doing this when I got to the edge of a tide rip and things started to happen. First I got a couple of missed strikes, then a couple of casts later I got a good solid hook up. The fish didn't do too much jumping, but instead thrashed on the surface a bit and pulled much harder than can be expected for its size. Classic sea-run Cutthroat... After a short battle, I brought the beautiful 15" Cutthroat to my net, took a couple of photos and then watched as my first fish of 2010 swam back into the depths.

A healthy ghostly chrome 15" Cutthroat

After the Cutthroat I got a couple more hits, but the rip started pushing out of range as the tide rose and made it so I couldn't get to the fish. With that I headed down to another productive stretch of the beach were I had another good hook up, but lost the fish and had a few more hits. With the light failing me at this point it was time to call it a day on my first outing of the new year.

Sunset on the Puget Sound