Winging it

I am always on the lookout for that perfect mountain stream. No matter how nice of a stream I find in know that there has to be another one out there waiting for me. A few days ago I made the run up to the Cascades with the full intention of checking out a stream that had been on my ever growing "to fish" list. However, as has been known to happen with me I over shot my destination by a few miles and ended up somewhere entirely different. My first thought was to just turn around go with the original plan, but it just happened that my first opportunity to turn around was at a creek crossing. Of course I had to take a look at this random creek before turning around and I really liked what I saw! With that I had a new plan and grabbed my 1wt and headed down to the water.

The creek

It seems that about 50-75% of the creeks in the Washington Cascades that look good and have such easy access end up being hardly worth the effort. This was not one of those. On my first cast the shadow of a trout rose from the depths of the small pool and slammed my dry. Being my first cast and with me doubting the fishiness of the creek, this rise caught me totally off guard and I missed the fish. However, on the next cast I was a bit more prepared and ended up bringing a beautiful little Rainbow to hand. This pool produced five or six more smallish trout, before I decided that it was time to go investigate some of the upstream pools.

That ended up being a much more difficult prospect than I originally thought, as the creek got hemmed in by a canyon pretty quickly. However, with a bit of cliff climbing I found a beautiful deep pool that screamed trout. My first few casts came up blank, before I noticed a nice sized trout working a foam line along the cliff a few feet in front of me. It took a couple of casts, but I finally caught its attention and the trout came up and gulped my dry. This trout had a lot of spirit and put up a good battle on the 1wt before finally coming to hand.

A beautifully colored Rainbow Trout

The coloration of this fish immediately struck me as compared to native Coastal Rainbow Trout that I am used to, this fish was much more vibrantly colored and looked much more like McCloud River Redband, making me wonder about the stocking history of the watershed. Additionally, ever now and again I would encounter a very clear Cuttbow hybrid. After the Redband like fish, I managed to get one more similarly size fish out of the same spot, this time on my dropper, but that was all that this hole would give up so I decided to move on. The terrain made in impossible to head upstream, so instead I went back down and found another very fishy pool.

The pool

Where I had to work for the fish in the pool upstream, this pool was packed with willing trout and provided me with a good half an hour of fun before the bite went off. The vast majority of these fish were Rainbows, although a handful of the appeared to be Coastal Cutthroat or hybrids.

A Cuttbow with an appetite for a Royal PMX

After covering this pool I decided to go with a change of pace and headed to a nearby larger piece of water. This river is one of the few Washington Cascade streams that still has a full fledged old growth forest along its banks and is truly wild still. No dams, no development, no clear cuts, everything is just as it is supposed to be. However, even with this being the case this river in not known for particularly strong trout populations and is touted as a tough fishery. In the hour and a half that I fish this stream, it proved that point as one silver bullet of a Coastal Rainbow was all that I could manage to find.

One wild Washington river

A typical silvery native Coastal Rainbow Trout

On the way home from the trip I decided to make a quick visit to one of Washington's more notable landmarks for a quick stroll in the high country before finishing my drive.

Mighty Mt. Rainier