Welcome to 2026 everybody! To many, a new year represents promise, growth, hope and change. It's a time to reflect on what you learned or accomplished in 2025, perhaps reimagine the game plan or just commit to doing more of the same. I tend to try a little of both, at least in the fly fishing world. There are places on this earth that I love and cherish and will make every effort to fish them again this year as I have for decades. Then there are the new spots I hope to visit, new techniques to explore, new flies to try out. It's all so exciting. As anglers, one of the many threads that seems to tie us together is curiosity. What's around the next bend? What's finning beneath the surface? I wonder if this weird bug I fashioned at the vise late last night after a couple of bourbons will catch a fish. Exploration leads to discovery and discovery feels pretty amazing most of the time.
Following last month's historical flooding on our local rivers, it's a whole new landscape out there. Favorite runs filled in with sediment, streams cut new channels through untouched forest and a few marginal runs that "always had potential" magically became primo fish holding lies through the awesome transformative power of nature. It's kind of a shame we won't be able to discover the full breadth of change with our few local rivers that aren't already closed closing at the end of this month, but I suppose there'll be plenty of newness to embrace elsewhere, from the Olympic Peninsula to Lower Mainland, BC.
If you love swinging flies for steelhead, western Washington is becoming a harder and harder place to scratch that itch. The other option for displaced anglers looking for a winter adventure is to chase summer in a different hemisphere, or at the least migrate towards summer-like conditions. If you've never tried it, flats species like bonefish will take your mind off the lack of winter steelheading options almost as fast as they can streak across a shallow expanse of tepid water. We do a trip or two every year in the off months and would encourage you to think about joining us one of these days. Don't think too fast as these trips usually fill up pretty fast. We have a hosted trip to Cuba set up for 2027 if you want to put that on your radar. Even if you'd rather do your own thing and sneak away for a few hours on a tropical family trip or plan a DIY adventure with your best buddies there are a lot of options available and you're more than welcome to bounce some ideas off of us.
Outside of looking for fishing options, whether nearby or south of the equator, January is a fine time to get some flies tied. We order tying materials from a number of big vendors fairly frequently through the winter in an effort to keep everything in stock for the tying community. If you're looking for anything we don't have, there's a great chance we can tack it onto an order and get it in for you pretty quickly. We'll have another Hareline order going in at the end of the week. Along these lines, the black or purple marabou crisis of late 2025 is about over and we expect to be getting a good quantity of both colors of the quality Fish Hunter blood quill within the next week or so. Winter is also a fine time to invest some energy into learning new skills, whether you're working on casting or tying flies. We cover all of it. Thanks to Mr. Jordan Treadway for a wonderful steelhead tube fly tying class last week. These classes are always a lot of fun and we enjoy doing them. Let us know if there's a tying class theme you'd like to see in the coming months, be it sea run cutthroat patterns, euro nymphs, lake flies or anything else. We would love to offer a few more classes in the off months to help you start filling your boxes. Also coming up in a few weeks on February 1st is the 2026 Fly Fishing Film Tour at the Lincoln Theatre in Mount Vernon. This is a different film festival than what aired in November and we're looking forward to enjoying a new round of movies celebrating and showcasing the activity that brings us all together. You can get tickets online from the F3T or you can scan the poster to purchase discounted tickets next time you're in the shop.
Whatever your plans this cold and rainy season, we want to sincerely thank you for supporting us as your local fly shop and we look forward to sharing with you all the promise and anticipation that another year of fishing offers.
Rivers
Is anyone else getting a sore neck from watching the river flows go dramatically up and down? We're on the heels of yet another atmospheric river and the streams are again running bank to bank. There aren't a ton of viable local river options this time of year but the Skagit/Sauk remain open through the end of January, as does most of the Stillaguamish. The entire Nooksack system closed on January 1st. Unfortunately, our state legislature failed to fund the Quicksilver Portfolio for the next two years. Despite the Skagit winter steelhead forecast of 4557 fish (enough to open a limited fishery), there will not be a season due to lack of funding for monitoring. If you've not already done so, please reach out to your legislators to express your dissatisfaction. You can find a guide for writing an effective letter/email from North Sound Trout Unlimited here. With continued pressure we can hope to see this program funded in the future and continue to enjoy the last remaining wild steelhead fishery in the Puget Sound.
We're finding bull trout, rainbows, the odd late coho and there have been a few early steelhead showing up as well. After our record flooding in December it has been a marvel to see all of the changes to the streambed. With that much water roaring through the system, a ton of wood and sediment have shifted around. Watch your step when you're out there. Between the fine silty flooded river deposits that add a whole new level of slickness to forest trails to the super-saturated quagmires of sand that will sink you up to your thigh, watch your step out there. Once the few local rivers are closed, we have the Olympic Peninsula, a few streams in Southwest Washington and the drainages north of the border to pursue steelhead. It's a tough pill to swallow but that's what we have to work with.
Lakes
If there's a plus side to a warmer, wetter winter, it's that many of our year round lakes fish relatively decent. Any lake not otherwise listed in the WDFW regulations is open year round. A few friends and I hiked into an open lake recently. It was a balmy 50 degree day and the impending squalls from the latest pineapple express held off for the moment. Water temps hovered just below the mid-40's and we could even see a few micro midges hatching at mid-day, though nary a trout rose to eat them. After some prospecting from our float tubes, we found a small bay with a decent number of coastal cutthroat and a few rainbows in about 15 feet of water. Small black leech patterns on a slow sink line were the special of the day and produced a handful of healthy trout when retrieved as slowly as possible. While fishing was far from fast and furious, any day you can spend on the water in pleasant conditions, in the company of friends and connect with some nice fish is a day to be appreciated.
Winter lake fly selection is pretty straightforward until the water warms to 45 degrees Fahrenheit and we begin to see chironomids hatching. A variety of small leech patterns like BH Mini Leeches, Black & Red Simi Seal Leeches and BH Hale Bopps work well. Balanced Leeches, particularly the attractor variety like the Egg Sucking, Black/Chartreuse Bead or Balanced Squirrel with a hot orange bead are other go to patterns. Don't overlook Blobs as well. A few buddies and I ushered in the new year with a "polar bear swim" via float tube in Pass Lake on January 1st. While we didn't exactly knock it out of the park, the few nice rainbows that came to hand all ate Blobs fished under an indicator. So while we can anticipate that lake fishing will undoubtedly pick up steam as we slowly ease towards spring, we'd encourage you to get out and wet a line when the weather permits. I'll hold fast to my mantra that fishing is always better than not fishing.
Beaches
A few bull trout are showing up along the North Whidbey beaches and you can find decent winter sea run cutthroat fishing further south in the Sound. Look for local beach fishing to pick up come springtime.