High tide to High tide

This last week the Puget Sound had a series of extreme low tides. These tides, coupled with a string of nice weather that we have been experiencing made for some interesting fishing conditions. On Wednesday I was able to get out on the water to try both sides of the tide. In the morning I headed up to one of my favorite Cutthroat beaches with my friend Luke to try our luck on the outgoing tide. 

The tide was going from a 12 foot high to a minus 3.5 foot low tide, so we knew that the water was really going to be moving. We got on the water by 7:30 AM as the tide was just starting to ebb so there still wasn't much back cast room. However, there were already some Cutthroat working a school of baitfish off of a point, so Luke and I both put on baitfish imitations and got to work. The action was fast, but unfortunately it was mostly smolts that wanted to bite so we kept working our way down the beach in search of larger fish. Luke and I both managed to get a few nice takes, but didn't get any solid hookups so we decided to head back to the point and try another pass through. 

When we arrived back at the point, I changed to an experimental pattern and all of a sudden started getting hits almost every cast but no clean hook sets. Finally I got a nice tug, which was followed with the feeling of a head shank and I knew that I had a solid hook set. The Cutthroat fought hard, but within a minute or so I had a nice 15" Cutthroat in the net. The fish was chrome bright with a hint of yellow on its flanks. However, this fish this fish had its mind made up that it didn't want its photo taken and made a successful bid for freedom.

Next Luke and I decided that would try another stretch of this beach that is generally fairly productive for Cutthroat and Coho. This was the typical Puget Sound cast & take two steps type of beach, where fish may be spread out anywhere along the shoreline and you have to cover the water if you want to catch anything. We had covered a little over half of this stretch of beach with me only picking up a couple more smolts when Luke finally got a decent resident Coho at about 14". Right at the end of the stretch that we were covering, the beach goes out to a point and that was where I finally hooked up again. This fish had followed the fly almost all of the way up to the rod tip and as such it didn't have much line to play with so, after a very quick battle I brought it to the net.

My second decent Cutthroat of the day

It was close to 11:00 AM at this point and as I had to be to work at the fly shop at noon and the tide was getting a bit low it was time to call it quits.

I hadn't been planning on fishing the evening incoming tide, but I got a text from Zach saying that he needed to get out and fish and seeing as I had all of my gear on me, I decided - why not? I told him to meet me when I got off work and we went out to one of the many Gig Harbor area beaches. However, when we got to the beach we found the water completely covered with seaweed. I wasn't overly surprised as with the extremely low tides and nice weather seaweed gets exposed at low tide, dried out by the sun, then floats off on the incoming tide. Nevertheless, it made for much less than idea conditions. The fishing was nearly as productive as on the morning tide either and after an hour the only fish that I had caught as a small Cutthroat smolt. However, when the tide was nearly up we spotted some decent sized fish and worked them for a while, with me only getting one hard take before we were forced to move on to a beach that could be fished at high tide.

Zach working a cove where we could see a lot of baitfish activity

Fishing at this next beach wasn't much of an improvement, with the exception that there was no seaweed to be seen anywhere. We did spot one very large Cutthroat, lots of bait and Zach had a good take so this spot does show promise. Beyond that it was a great way to a end the day with the sun setting and the tide at the same height that I had found it in the morning. For my next outing I am off to Oregon to try my luck for some Redbands.

A great end to a great day