Back to the Olympics

Although I made several trips out to the Olympic Peninsula for trout early in the season this year, I haven't done nearly as much as I would have liked. Pretty much what happened is that this year the already short season for these streams was made even shorter by unusually high flows during June and July. In fact in has only been within the last few weeks that some of the streams have even become considerable options.

Unfishable conditions not so long ago on one of the Olympic streams

However, with the streams now lower, clearer and readily wadeable, things have became a bit more predictable. With the season winding down and conditions right, my buddy Colton and I headed out to one of my favorite underrated Olympic streams.

The river... Slightly more fishable...

We hiked into my favorite run and found the river in perfect condition. Although this stream no longer supports viable Steelhead runs, the fish still have Steelhead genetics in them and as such similar tactics are quite effective. I started out swinging soft hackle nymphs on my 2wt and it didn't take long to get some results. With my first cast resulting in a spunky 10" Rainbow that slammed the fly as I was stripping back in. A few casts later it was Colton's turn.

Colton hooked up

We worked our way down the run the same way I would if I were steelheading, placing a cast, letting the fly swing across the current, then taking a couple steps downstream and repeating the process. Once we got to the end of the tail out, we repeated he process, this time using dead drifted dries and picking up the fish that we had missed swinging. The fish weren't huge, with most being in the 6" to 8" range, but all of them were well fed and scrappy fighters. Not to say that there weren't bigger ones too and the prospect of catching something over 12" was enough to keep us going.

An average Rainbow

We worked a string of about four runs that are close together by either swinging or casting dries until we were satisfied that we had caught enough fish for one day.