After work outing

With things settling down a bit here in Washington after a crazy spring, I have had a bit more time to get out for some after work outings. One thing that has been nice with moving to Olympia besides being much closer to work, is that I am also much closer to a number of fishing spots ranging from beaches to mountain and coastal streams. Yesterday I had the opportunity to fish a nearby stream after work. I had a dry dropper set up to try, but there just wasn't any surface activity going on so I decided to prospect with a small streamer that has worked well for Coastal Cutthroat in the past. While I did have a few hits with the streamer while working through some likely runs, it wasn't until I got to the last hole of the day that it actually produced with a solid take. The fish has some serious power behind it, putting a good bend in my fly rod and staying deep right until the very end. Once the fish came up to the net I was pleasantly surprised to see it was a nice Bull Trout coming in at about 17". Not bad for a quick evening outing.

A nice evening Bull Trout

Fishing the New Home Stream

Last year my family moved to be closer to our jobs and after a busy first year getting settled and all of the craziness with the pandemic this spring I have finally had some time to start exploring one of my new home streams a bit more. Prior to moving I had fished this stream a few times over the years and it supports a robust native population of stream resident Coastal Cutthroat. However, now I am able to spend a bit more time exploring it and took a couple of hours in the evening to ply its waters with my 2wt and a trusty Royal PMX and Lightning Bug dropper rig.

The stream

The stream is largely rain driven, meaning that it comes into shape much sooner than most other watersheds in the area. When I arrived there were a few caddis and PMD spinners around, but based on my past experience the fish here have not been to picky and attractors usually do the job. This time was no different it didn't take long to find some nice little Cutthroat. The first one I got was a little female with a spawning scar tail and was a bit greedy taking both the dry and the dropper. 

A greedy little female Coastal Cutthroat

Not to far upstream I landed my fish of the evening a nice chunky 12" native Coastal Cutthroat on the PMX. 

This of the evening

All and all I worked about a 2/3 of mile of the stream and caught plenty of 6-8" Cutthroat the one at 12" and lost one that was slightly better than that right at the net. Definitely a great evening on the new home stream and I am looking forward to many more.