Washington's Native Westslope Cutthroat

The east side of the Cascade Mountains in Washington State hosts a handful of watersheds in which native Westslope Cutthroat have managed persist despite the onslaught of habitat destruction and non-native trout introductions that over occurred over the last century. Since discovering it a few years ago, I try to make annual trip to my favorite one of these streams to fish its beautiful native Cutthroat. While this is often a solo trip for me, this year I was joined by Clint. With the high snow pack and cool spring, we found the creek running about a foot higher than usual, but luckily it the water was crystal clear.

 

The creek

Generally this stream is a pocket water fisherman's dream, but due to the high water the fish were not in their usual lies, preferring the slower pools and runs. Once we found where they were holding through, the fish were quite eager to rise for a dry fly. We worked our way upstream catching several Cutthroat up to 13 inches in each likely looking spot.

 

A beautiful native Westslope Cutthroat

The little canyon on the stream

A beautiful and productive canyon stretch (photo above), Clint caught a fish, but after unhooking it his fly got tangled in the net. In the few moments that it took him to free the fly, I managed to catch 3 fish on three casts and lost a 4th one. 

A net full of Cutthroat

After we got Clint's fly free he pull two more Westslopes out of the hole before we continued upstream. We continued working our way upstream having to climb around several sets of falls to get to the best water between the last set of falls and the point where the creek forks.

The last waterfall before the best water on the creek.

Above these falls the average size of the fish drastically increased being closer to 10", instead of the 6-8" below. It was above there that Clint got his big fish of the day.

Clint's big Westslope

A dry fly caught native Cutthroat

We finished out the day by fishing up to the forks on the creek, I got a couple decent fish in my favorite riffle on the stream, before we worked our way back to the car about 1.5 miles downstream, after a very productive day of fishing.