About this blog

This blog is all about fly fishing for native trout. On it I cover trip reports, fishing tactics, conservation, the latest news about native trout species and much more. This site provides a companion to my web page Nativetroutflyfishing.com.

Gary

Friday, September 30, 2011

Salter cutthroat again

So in between trips, I got in a couple of outings on the Puget Sound for some sea-run Cutthroat. On the first of these trips I met up with a fellow native trout enthusiast Steve from Texas to try to help him out with his first coastal cutthroat. With a promising outgoing tide we headed down to my home beach to try out luck.

Morning on the Sound

It definitely didn't take too long to see signs of fish as there were Cutthroat busting on schools of perch and sandlance. However, these fish seemed to be a bit finicky and for the amount of fish around, things seemed a bit slow. We each did manage to hook a few fish, but they all managed to pop off right at the net. As the tide started to slow I made the call to head down the beach a ways to try a point that generally treats me well. This was the ticket as the Cutthroat seemed to be much more willing biters here.

Steve's first Coastal Cutthroat

Steve was fishing a surface fly and it didn't take to long to start getting some action and to land his first sea-run. There were a few larger fish around as well and I managed to get a few in the 12-14" range.

A nice sea-run

As is usual with Cutthroat fishing on the Sound though, as the tide slacked off and so did the fishing, so we headed to another beach. We did get into a few nice fish at the other spot, but it definitely took a bit more searching and after fishing through almost the entire incoming we had only brought a few more Cutthroat to hand. Without a whole lot of beach left, we headed down to another point with a good tide rip and I got a short lived surprise by a migratory Coho. I was retrieving my fly at my standard speed and decided to pick up the pace a bit and within two strips; bam! I set the hook only to have nothing there and when I brought my line in I saw why... No fly and no tippet left. Just as I was thinking that this wasn't the work of a Cutthroat, the culprit a 7 or 8lb Coho with a some line hanging out of its mouth jumped and confirmed my suspicions. No complaints, but as with last year it appears that my Coho curse continues... After my incident with the Coho, Steve picked up a smaller resident Coho, another first for him before the tide forced us to call it a day.

Steve's resident Coho

1 comment:

HighPlainsFlyFisher said...

Those are some really cool fish , I can't imagine standing in the ocean with scenery like that and catching cutthroats. Something new to add to my bucket list.