As we "march" towards the official start of spring, I can't help but notice that many of the signs are already there. I hear the faint drumming of grouse while walking an old riverbed. The chorus of frogs echoes through the wetlands of the Skagit Valley and my favorite of them all, the Varied Thrush, haunts the woods with its penetrating two-note song while I clamor amongst the budding Salmonberry and Indian Plum on my way to the next spot. It's been a few months of mostly winter steelheading now and while the fishing has been great, some days the catching has been lackluster. They come in waves. One week there are more than a few around and you're hooking one here and there. The next the river appears empty save for dejected anglers wandering the cobbled bars or gliding downriver in drift boats. Despite sometimes forlorn expressions, we're all incredibly happy to be there. Where else would you be? We have to remind ourselves as anglers that despite our copious note-taking, journaling and years of experience, we don't always get to be the timekeepers we'd ultimately like to be. Nature runs according to her own watch, and in the case of anadromous fish, that means they show up when they're good and ready to. And you do your darnedest to be there when that happens.
Lakes are slowly warming up, though again, not as quickly as we'd expect them to. We'll have a string of almost 60 degree warm and sunny days and I declare to nobody in particular that it's got to be time for chironomids to be hatching and for trout to be eating them with reckless abandon. A quick dip of the thermometer indicates otherwise and we still have a degree or two to go on most local bodies of water before the temperature is warm enough for the real smorgasbord of insects and gorging trout begins. Things should throttle up soon on the stillwaters and you'll want to be there when they do.
Beyond the fishing, we're starting to get shipments of new 2025 products into the shop every other week and for those of you that have been waiting patiently for a big box of Bridge Spey Lines to show up at the Confluence, the wait is finally over. You can catch a glimpse of the latest stuff on our New Products Page. The annual Fly Fishing Film Tour will be at the Lincoln Theatre Sunday, March 16th. We still have tickets available at the shop and hope to see you there to enjoy this year's films with us. North Sound Project Healing Waters, North Sound Women on the Fly and Trout Unlimited will be set up at the show as well. The Fourth Corner Fly Club is hosting their biennial Conservation Auction on Saturday, April 19th at the Bellingham Golf and Country Club. These auctions are always pretty fun and you can score some great deals on donated fishing equipment and other fine items. You don't need to be a club member but you will need to sign up to attend. It's still a ways out, but be sure to mark Saturday, May 3rd on your calendar for this year's Speyapalooza. Whether you want to learn to spey cast or fine tune your skills, we have free classes going on throughout the event. You must pre-register for a class in advance but there's no cost to do so.
There's no shortage of activities to keep us all busy this spring but chief among them is spending time on the water with some of your favorite people. We hope to see you out there or in the shop soon. Enjoy what's left of winter and say hello the season of renewed possibilities!
Rivers
We still have through April 15th for the spring C&R season steelhead season on the Skagit and Sauk. With the North Coast Olympic Peninsula rivers closing at the end of March we expect it will get a little busier on this side of Puget Sound. There have been fish around. The cycle is much as expected. We get some good rain, rivers rise and a pulse of new steelhead show up and make their way upstream. The river drops and begins to flatline on the hydrograph and the fishing kind of does too until some more rain manifests. We've got a good stock of winter steelhead flies on hand to keep you armed and ready to swing. If you tie your own, the February Fly of the Month has accounted for several steelhead already this season. It's a good one in a variety of colors. I mostly fish blacks, purples and blues on the overcast days and reds, oranges or pinks on the bright sunny ones. Funny thing is, you'll catch fish on the flies you fish the most so the best attitude to maintain is that a steelhead's favorite fly is whatever you're fishing at the moment.
The lower Skagit below the Memorial Highway Bridge in Mount Vernon opened on March 1st for trout and char. We haven't been down there yet this spring but it can make for a welcome diversion from steelheading and fishing around a bunch of other anglers. You largely need a boat to access much of the lower Skagit but if you do some poking around you can find some shore access here and there. That fishery really perks up when good numbers of chum fry start showing up along the shallow edges of the river. We've been seeing more and more fry each week in the section above Concrete so things should only improve from there. Teo has tied up a gob of Chum Babies for the shop recently. That's a great pattern to have along with the Chumbody's Baby and Lord of the Frys. For Bulls, we like to toss some bigger patterns as well, like white Zonkers and Dali Llamas, white CH Marabou Muddlers and Precious Metals.
Folks are also migrating east to experience the Yakima River in all its Spring glory. If you're headed that way, Skwala Stones, BH Twenty Inchers, Lightning Bugs and small Perdigon Nymphs along with Zebra Midges and Squirmy Worms are working well. For streamers throw in some Olive Meat Sweats and Sculpzillas to elicit a memorable grab.
Lakes
For the last couple of weeks as the weather warms up I've thought this is going to be the week that Pass Lake lights up with a flurry of chironomids wriggling up from the bottom and eager rainbows in hot pursuit. It hasn't quite happened yet, but this could be the week. The water temperature is getting very close to optimal for bugs to resume hatching in numbers but then again, "Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades." If you're heading to a local year round stillwater, prepare yourself with some Mini Leeches, Bloodworm patterns, Balanced Leeches and Hale Bopps. And because you're planning to be there when the chironomids rise en masse from the muddy bottom, you'll also want some TW UT Black Chironomid Red Holo Ribs, some black Ice Cream Cones, some Chromies, some Black Red Butts and a few Hanging With My Chromies in black and in red. Chironomids run smaller early in the season so we're fishing mostly #16's and sometimes #18's.
Beaches
It's certainly the time of year we begin seeing salty bulls off the eastside of Whidbey Island Beaches. While there typically aren't many chum fry showing up until sometime in April in the North Puget Sound saltwater, Clousers, Flash Drives, Deep Minnow Stingers and Rio's Just Keep Swimming make a tempting meal for a piscivorous predator.