Doug Rose Flyfishing

Fishing Report: Barlow’s Bar, Lower Hoh, Friday, March 5–see “Tragedy of the Commons.”

I did something very sensible and liberating today: I fished for something other than steelhead. I drove back to one of my old haunts on Hood Canal and fished for cutts. I had a great time and, even better, didn’t see another angler.

And, yes, the chum fry are on the move, and the cutts are on them. I will have a report on my day in the spring newsletter. It’ll be up next week.

I’ve been busy guiding and working on the spring newsletter. I had some excellent fishermen last week but the fishing was tough with the rising water. The rivers have come down again, and there should be fresh fish in the lower rivers. Don’t expect solitude unless you have some tricks up your sleeve or, if you’re fishing from a boat, are the very first person at the launch in the morning–a hard thing to accomplish on these rivers this time of year. 

The newsletter will be out early next week. It has a couple new essays and a fly plate. I’ll also list my spring clinics and guiding schedule. 

Nothing is fishable, at least the way I like to fish for steelhead–wading and swinging. The rivers actually went up again since my last post. They’re coming down now, but it’ll be late in the week before I hit the rivers again. Oh well, I got a care package from Waters West last week, and I am happy tying flies after working on my book. I have been on a Quillayute and Polar Shrimp jag lately. I really love the teal body hackle and golden pheasant wing on the Quillayute. The colors and markings complement each other beautifully. I also replenished my supply of 45 mm Waddington shanks and will be tying a few Beauly Snow Flys tonight.

Eliana and I hiked the hill in town yesterday–where I saw the salmonberry blossoms last week–and saw Indian plum leaves, even some flowers, and brand new skunk cabbage bracts. I wish I could believe this is for real. It makes me want to put some spinach and peas in the garden.

It also makes me think the chum salmon fry could be on the move earlier than usual this spring. And you can probably figure out what that makes me want to do–hit some of my beaches on Admiralty Inlet and northern Hood Canal. I’ve even got a brand new Temple Fork Clouser 5-weight that I want to try out. 

You can scratch what I said about fishing the Quillayute rivers this weekend. It’s been raining here hard off and on all day. The rivers are coming down on the charts but they’re too high for good wade fishing. Even the Hoko looks too high. I’m sure some folks will fish in boats, but I don’t think there’s much point in swinging until Monday, at least.

When I opened up my blog this morning, I was amaazed to see how long it’s been since I last posted anything. This is a busy time of year on the West End, and I’ve been fishing or guiding or scouting water most days. I’ve also been working on my duck hunting book. It hasn’t been hard to avoid the website.

Actually, although the rivers have been in good shape the last week or so, the fly fishing hasn’t been that great. The Quillayute rivers got very low and that, coupled with the sunny days we had earlier in the week, made things tough. I spent most of my time on the Hoh, and it was perfect, but I didn’t touch a fish. Nor did I hear of very many other steelhead taken on flies, especially on swung flies. 

According to many of the old timers out here, in the days before hatchery fish were planted, there was always a lull during the first two weeks of February. It seems there were two separate components of wild fish–an early December pulse, followed by the late run.    

I may have intercepted a vanguard of the late wild fish the day before yesterday. I was back on the Hoh. I knew it was supposed to rain pretty hard on Thursday, so I figured I’d enjoy it while I still could. I hiked into a long rippling green run about a half-hour from the road. I fished my TFO switch rod, with an AFS line and Type 7 tip. My fly was a Polar Shrimp, tied Spey-style, with a white hackle tip wing.

The fish hit about half way down the run, at the tail of the swing, just before the fly began to hang. It was a jolting strike, and the fish was in the air a moment later. It was chalice-bright, and I could tell from 60 feet away that it was a hen. It jumped three times, then peeled line.

It took me about five minutes to land. I got it up into knee-deep water twice before I got a hand on it. It was about 12 pounds and had a perfect adipose fin. I was all alone and glad I had an 11-foot rod rather than my longer two-handers. I have never mastered landing large hot fish on long rods by myself.

It was rainy and very windy yesterday (Thursday), and it’s raining hard again this morning. The Hoh and Queets are gone, at least from the looks of the charts, and the Calawah and Bogachiel and Sol Duc have come up a lot. If you’re planning on fishing out here over the three day weekend, you’ll probably want to concentrate on the Quillayute System–along with everyone else.

By the way, I saw my first new oxalis leaves on the upper Hoh two weeks ago, and there were more of them and they were larger this week. Yesterday, while I was hiking the hill by the natural resource center in Forks–I’m trying to get my legs back for a final trip up the Elwha this summer–I actually saw salmonberry blossoms. That seemed odd, because I usually see skunk cabbage and red-flowering currant long before I see salmonberry flowers.

It looks like spring is trying to make an early show this year.  Don’t hold me to that, though. Last year, I guided a lot of snowy mornings in March, and the year before I remember driving along the lower Hoh in driving snow in April.

It sure was great finally getting back on the water yesterday. I wasted part of the day messing around with trying to have a tire repaired, then buying a new one, but I managed a few hours in the afternoon. I didn’t catch a fish, but I got a good, frankly savage, yank. It was very brief and I don’t have any real idea how big the fish was, but it felt like the kind of tug you get from a large aggressive wild male. I avoided both the Sol Duc and Bogachiel, where the overwhelming bulk of the pressure has been this week, and enjoyed complete solitude. I didn’t have any other bites, and the river was still a little higher than I like for swinging and wading.

The best part of my brief encounter with the steelhead  was that it hit a Syd Glasso dressing, an Orange Heron with a gadwall flank throat, tied on a size 1/0 hook. In fact, I fished Glasso Speys exclusively yesterday. As I wrote a couple weeks ago, there hasn’t been a lot to do in Forks during the recent high water except work on my duck hunting book and tie flies. I’ve filled several new fly boxes, one of them entirely with Glasso patterns–Sol Ducs, Sol Duc Speys, Sol Duc Darks and Glasso- style (feather wing) Polar Shrimp. My Spey flies are pretty sorry compared to artists like Dick Wentworth, John Shewey and Dave McNeese, but they have the right proportions and colors and don’t fall apart. I really love fishing for steelhead with flies that were created on West End rivers, especially Glasso Speys.

                                   Starting Over

Okay, we’ve got a little more rain coming in tonight and tomorrow, but after that it looks like we’re entering a fairly dry stretch. The rivers, which have been coming down all week and now have good color, may bump up a bit but should be in great shape for wading and swinging by midweek. After an unusually long stretch of terrible river conditions, it looks like we may finally have an extended period when we’ll be able to fly fish. 

It’s almost feels like a second beginning of the winter steelhead season. And the timing is fantastic, because late January and February are when we begin to see more big wild fish and the hatchery runs dwindle. I have already heard of three 20-plus-pound wild fish on the Quillayute rivers.

As recently as 10 years ago, the conclusion of the hatchery run also signaled the end of the big crowds on West End rivers. Unfortunately, the days when it was mostly locals on these rivers in February, March and April are now a faint memory. Indeed, we now get the bulk of the winter steelhead effort–at least from fly fishers–in late winter and early spring. And the closure of the Skagit/Sauk late season this year will only exacerbate the crowding. Fly fishing for winter steelhead on these beautiful rivers has become, I fear, an industry.

Oh well, as I said in my winter newsletter, I know how to get away from the armadas. I even have a bunch of new runs to concentrate on this season.   

Depending on what happens tonight, I’ll hit either a creek or one of the Quillayute rivers tomorrow. I’ll let you know how it goes. And from now on, I’ll post something every day or two. That is, as long as we don’t get very many more days with 5 inches of rain.

I know it’s a mistake to assume that everyone who reads this blog has at least a vague idea of the current weather on the West End. It’s also probably a mistake to assume that folks understand that when I don’t post for a while it is because the rivers haven’t been fishable. 

Nonetheless, I make both of these mistakes on a regular basis during the winter.

So let me be precise: I haven’t fished for two weeks because every time I have had a chance to the rivers have been badly out of shape, at least for the type of wading and swinging that I prefer.

Here are the rainfall numbers for between Friday the 8th of January and last Thursday, the 14th: 1/8–1.34 inches; 1/9–1.14; 1/10–.08; 1/11–5.38; 1/12–2.98; 1/13–1.68; 1/14–4.36. 

So far, we have had a total of 23.67 inches in January. That compares to an average of 9.69 for the period. We only had 8.25 inches in December.

We got another big pulse of rain and wind last night, as well. However, it wasn’t anywhere near as bad as early weather forecasts suggested it could have been.

Eliana and I took Lily, our yellow Lab, out to Rialto Beach this morning to look at the surf. It was pretty impressive. I bet some of the waves were 20 feet.

From the looks of the Bogachiel and Sol Duc at Leyendeckers, I wouldn’t count on fly fishing for a few days, at least. At least the long term forecast looks good.

As a result of the bad river conditions, I’ve been tying more flies. I’ve tied so many since the holidays, in fact, I had to buy two new fly boxes. Well, actually they’re old Perrine boxes, which I like and are becoming increasingly hard to get. I got them from Bob Gooding, at Olympic Sporting Goods in Forks.

Happy New Year everyone! I had planned to begin blogging regularly on steelheading after the holidays–not to mention guiding–but the big rain last Thursday and Friday knocked the rivers out yet again. We have had good numbers of fish this winter, including some nice wild steelhead, but the number of days when the conditions have been optimal for fly fishing have been fairly rare. That’s really not that unusual in Forks in early winter, of course, and we got a lot of new rain again yesterday, just as the rivers were coming down nicely. I hope to fish Friday. Maybe.

Meanwhile, I’ve been tying a lot of flies. I’m still working on my Spey flies, in particular Syd Glasso’s Sol Duc and his Spey version of the Polar Shrimp. I’m also still having my usual difficulties with the wings. I’ve also tied a few of James Garrett’s–another Olympic Peninsula fly tyer whom Trey Combs wrote about in Steelhead Fly Fishing–Red Shrimp. It’s in the vein of a G.P. but with more of a traditional steelhead upright-winged profile. I also like Waddington shanks and have tied up some Beauly Snow Flies and my own patterns. Finally, I’ve been tying a few soft hackle and traditional wet flies but substituting waterfowl flank feathers for the partridge and other upland bird feathers.

I’ll let you know when I get back on the water.