Too many Pink Salmon

After my first couple trips looking for native trout in western Washington I had half a day free and decided to head up to one of my favorite rivers to see what I could find. My goal for the day was to see if I couldn't find some larger migratory Coastal Rainbow Trout or anadromous Coastal Cutthroat entering freshwater anticipating the upcoming feast of salmon eggs. As such I came equipped with three rods, one for streamers, a nymph rig and a dry rig with a mouse pattern tied on to try in the log jams.

A beautiful day on the water

When I arrived at the river, it was running low and clear and I immediately pulled out my nymph rig first and started working a riffle that dropped off into a deep run. While observing the pool I thought I saw some movement in the shady back part of the riffle and I decided to start out with my nymph rig to see what I could find. On my first cast, my indicator shot under and I was immediately hooked into a hot fish. This fish wasn't fighting like at trout and seemed to be bigger than the typical trout that I find in the river and sure enough when I got it close to shore I realized that it was a decent sized male Pink Salmon fresh from the saltwater, that apparently wanted to eat a caddis fly nymph.

Not exactly what I was looking for

While I initially thought this was a fluke, the same thing happened on the next cast as well and that was just a sign of things to come. It seemed that these fresh Pinks were extremely aggressive and occupying all of the best holding water. The only the only rig that they didn't seem interested in was the mouse pattern and my nymph rig and black sculpin pattern would last a few moments in the water before getting hammered. With these fish running 3lbs to 7lbs, this certainly isn't a bad problem to have, but I still really wanted to find a trout or two.

Yet another Pink Salmon

I ended up taking to fishing either the fastest riffles or the mouse pattern, which did rise a nice trout behind a downed tree, but other than that there were just too many Pinks to effectively fish and after a few hours on the river I decided to switch gears.

With no trout landed on the river, headed cobble beach for Coastal Cutthroat on my way back. Conditions seemed to be good with little wind, and a decent tidal push, but the Cutthroat just weren't around and after a few fly swaps and covering some prime water it was time to admit defeat on the trout front.

No trout but a great way to end the day on the water

While there weren't any trout to be found, the Pink Salmon were a nice surprise and the weather and surroundings were hard to beat. The arrival of the Pinks indicates that the season is already starting to change and hopefully as the salmon stream in the trout fishing will pick up.