Winter Steelhead Clinic with Doug Rose

On January 27th, Blake, Mark, Clayton and I all headed out to the Olympic Peninsula to take part in a winter steelhead clinic with Doug Rose. Doug has been fishing and guiding on the peninsula for years and has written several books on the subject, so I figured that this was a great chance to learn some more techniques for chasing these elusive fish. We all decided that rather than having to make the four hour drive out to Forks at O'Dark 30, it would be better to come out the night before and grab a hotel room, so we headed out one Monday evening instead. We woke up to 2 inches of snow on the ground and headed to a local restaurant to grab some breakfast before meeting up with Doug and the two other anglers that were taking part in the clinic. The first part of the clinic was held indoors and covered some of the basics about the Olympic streams, flies, lines, rods, tradition, etc. For the second part we headed out to the Bogachiel River to work on wet fly swing techniques.

 

Doug giving Mark some pointers on swinging a fly for steelhead

I put a pattern of my own design on and had a tug from something, but didn't hook up. We worked out way through the run two steps at a time and Blake got a hit but there were no hook ups.

 

Blake fishing the Bogi

After covering the run on the Bogachiel, Doug took us over to the Sol Duc River for the rest of the day. The Sol Duc is an amazingly beautiful river and was running a perfect blue-green color.

The Sol Duc

I worked the run swinging a prawn pattern for a while with no luck, then Blake and I had Doug show us a few spey casts on his switch rod. We spent the remainder of the day taking turns practicing with the switch rod and were getting some pretty decent casts off by the time we got off the water. I have to say that a switch rod would be a great way to fish the Puget Sound too, as high tide would be no problem anymore. The clinic was great and Doug definitely had a lot to teach.