The past two months in western Washington have seen some of the worst weather that I can remember for May and June, with only a handful of days without rain and not a single day with temperatures reaching 80 yet. This has led to very prolonged spring runoff and streams much higher than usual for this time of the year. A few days ago I made my way up to the Olympics and tried my luck on one of the smaller drainages in hopes that things would be a bit more manageable there.
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| Lots of water... |
What I found was a stream that was fishable, but I don't know if I would call it manageable by any means. Clarity was as good as I could hope for, but the stream was about a foot and a half higher than I normally expect, meaning that wading was down right difficult and fording the stream which is required to be successful was near impossible. However, when fishing in an old growth forest in the midst of some of the most beautiful and rugged peaks in the lower 48 states any fish are just a bonus.
As is normal with early season Olympic Mountain trout, I started out with a deep tandem nymph rig, consisting of a golden stone imitation up top and a smaller yellow sally imitation below. I found a likely looking slower pocket behind a rock and tossed my rig in. I allowed everything to sink in and as soon as my flies started to swing at the end of the drift, one of the many small native Coastal Rainbows in the stream materialized from the frothy current and grabbed my fly. Although the fish weren't large, with most being 6" to 10" they were beautiful showing abnormally pale sides for Rainbows with an extremely prominent red band along the lateral line.
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| A small but flawless native Coastal Rainbow Trout |
Each sizable pocket would invariably give up two or three fish, with most grabbing the nymphs on the swing or even on the retrieve at the end of the drift. After a while I decided to try some dries out, but the fish stubbornly refused to rise to anything and that type of fishing will have to wait for later in the season when the flows drop and summer finally settles in. I fished the stream until the shadows began to lengthen, signaling that it was time to get on the road again. Although it wasn't an ideal day on the water due to the stream conditions, anytime I can wet a line on the Peninsula is a good day!
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| Small stream fishing in an old growth forest, life doesn't get much better |
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2 comments:
I agree, it doesn't get much better than that. Great pics!
Scott, We actually had a very weird year as weather goes. Had next to no precipitation during February and March putting our snow pack a bit lower than usual. However it has been too cold for most of that snow to melt, so as of right now we have more snow than usual up in the high country. I drove over one of the passes at 5,400 ft and there was still 10+ feet of snow. Long story short it looks like the drought should be over.
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