Olympic trout round two

August 31st marked the end of the season on several of my favorite trout streams on the Olympic Peninsula, so last week I made a point to make one last trip out there before the closure. For further incentive buddy Colton was already camping out at the river so it was an easy call to make the drive out to the mountains. In this particular river, while the trout are not known for their size, they are known to be very willing risers and that is always a good thing in my book. Also being that this stream was made catch and release only last season, the population started to rebound making it a great little stream.

 

Colton fishing a tail out

We started fishing on the lower part of the river and within a few casts we were getting into fish. With an average size f about 7" they weren't going to win any awards for size, but what they lacked in that department they made up for in beauty.

The average dry fly eating Rainbow

This stretch represented water that I had already fished on a previous trip and I was anxious to try things out a little higher up in the drainage on this trip. This was in part due to my desire to see some new water, but also largely because of rumors of some bigger fish higher up. So after covering about a 1/4 mile of river and catching more than our fair share of Rainbows it was time to relocate.

The "river" a bit further upstream

Upstream the river was much more "creek-like" in size, but the fishing was if possible much faster paced than below. Each likely pocket was good for a trout or two and some of the pools and runs were just packed with fish. The size was a little bit bigger on average with a few more 8-9" fish popping up here and there, but nothing like the rumors I had heard of fish to 16". That was until we got to a hole just above a bit log jam, where some evidence of some bigger trout finally surfaced. After only a couple of drifts, a thick about 15" fish came up and did a head to tail rise on my fly. Unfortunately, I was a bit to slow on the trigger and I missed it. To make matters worse, I got two more shots at it and blew those too. After missing the big guy, we continued upstream where I got another surprise, this time in the form of a Brook Trout that likely dropped down from one of the alpine lakes that feed into the upper reaches.

A Brookie surprise

We fished upstream a bit more, but after a few more holes figured that we would save some water for the next trip. Of course I was also anxious to try my luck at the big guy again on our way back down. However, only its smaller next door neighbors were home. Oh well maybe next time....