"Fall fishing is a revival after the quieter times of summer. Cooler nights and the melt of early snowfall in the mountains bring lower water temperatures, and rains freshen the streams. Shadows are longer, shielding the pools. The fish are more active, and there is a touch of urgency about it all, a feeling that it cannot last very long, so one had better get out and be doing."
-Roderick Haig Brown from Fisherman's Autumn
When I think of November I think of these words from one of my favorite authors. In our ever-shortening days of late fall, as we hurdle towards the winter months, the streams have been up and down like a non-stop yo yo. The storms seem to come every few days, bringing with them fierce wind and stinging rain. The rivers are muddy again, my plans to fish thwarted, and I find myself anxiously watching the USGS hydrographs on my phone, tracking their slow descent towards something resembling fishability. Like watching paint dry, water boil or any other old adage that exemplifies the need for patience it never seems to happen quite according to your timeline. When rivers finally do drop and begin to clear in November, there is always the expectation of new and bright salmon just waiting to annihilate whatever bright concoction of feathers and fur you plan to toss their way. You are fishing with a clean slate. You are fishing with anticipation.
The activity of fly fishing is fraught with emotions. Exuberance, curiosity, sometimes frustration. Perhaps my favorite among them is the anticipation. Anticipation is the fuel that gets us out of bed on a dark and cold morning. Anticipation makes slipping into still damp waders and soggy boots tolerable. Anticipation carries us to the river safely as that first cup of coffee works its magic and sometimes, when we finally arrive at the spot, leads to an urgent and unexpected trip to the woods. Don't get me wrong, November in the Northwest can be brutal, but there is something incredibly beautiful within the dichotomy of being both cold and miserable and filled with wonder and life at the same time. You begin to appreciate the little things. That hot thermos of soup you had the foresight to bring along for just the right moment. The extra pair of warm dry gloves you stashed in your pocket, knowing they'd buy you an extra hour or two on the water once everything else has completely soaked through. The days are short, there is only so much time. Make the most of it. And as Haig-Brown sagely counsels, "get out and be doing."
In a fall like the one we seem to be having, two of your best tools for achieving some quality time on the water and even finding a few willing fish will be the USGS river flow gauges and the National Water Prediction Service site. The former gives you a sense of what the river is doing in real time. The latter informs you about what to expect over the coming days. A dropping river generally fishes better than a quickly rising one. Pay attention to snow levels. If there's snow blanketing the Cascades foothills, even a significant amount of rainfall won't really bump our rivers too terribly much provided the weather stays cold. There have been a fair number of coho coming into the Nooksack and Skagit along with more chum salmon. If you find yourself on an off day for salmon or can't seem to locate them, there have been more and more bull trout showing up too.
Speaking of rough weather, thanks to everyone who turned out for the 2026 International Fly Fishing Film Festival on Thursday. For many of us, the drive down was a nasty one in the torrential rain and we certainly could have used a USGS flow gauge to measure the discharge on I-5 in cubic feet per second. The films were enjoyable, the North Sound TU raffle went well, especially well for a few lucky winners and the folks at the Lincoln Theatre did a fantastic job hosting us as usual. Outside of fishing, we have some fun events coming up in the near future. North Sound Trout Unlimited is having a second Letters and Lagers event at Farmstrong Brewing in Mount Vernon on December 2nd. Letters and Lagers is designed to help encourage people to engage with their local legislatures and urge them to fund the Quicksilver Portfolio for the WDFW. Without funding, important elements of Quicksilver like wild steelhead monitoring will not happen over the next 2 years. We will also not have a spring catch and release steelhead season on the Skagit/Sauk regardless of how many fish are forecast to return. Now is a critical time to make your voice heard. Along these same lines, if you've got time and motivation to show up to the WDFW Commission meeting in Lynwood on November 14th, the commission is discussing and potentially voting on the wild trout policy. Currently, harvest is allowed on wild trout in a large number of streams in Washington. For many of these systems, limited or no trout population data exists. We believe that in the absence of data on stock status or population health, wild trout populations must be managed under non harvest regulations.
Our November Jerry French Steelhead Fly Tying Class filled up lightning fast. We will be offering a second class with Jerry on December 3rd. There are a couple of open spots left for that class if you'd like to sign up. Lastly, North Sound Trout Unlimited has an Iron Fly competition at Larrabee Brewing on December 11th. We've done a number of these in years past and they are always a lot of fun. We encourage you to show up and enjoy the creative mayhem, or better yet, register for free to participate as a tier. Please note that the shop will be closed for Thanksgiving on November 27th and 28th this year. We will be open all day for Small Business Saturday on the 29th, with some great sales running that day to be announced later this month.
Happy Veteran's Day and a heartful thanks to all of you who have served or are currently serving. We appreciate you! Hoping you stay warm, dry and connected to fish on a river near you!
Rivers
Up and down, up and down has been the cycle of late with our rivers. With each push of water comes a new wave of fish. The hard part is always waiting for the water to settle back into shape. I've personally found that replenishing the empty space in your box with the next round of flies dreamt up at the vise makes the time go by a little faster. With pink salmon but a distant memory now, the focus has been on coho and building numbers of chum salmon. Chum returns are typically smaller in odd years as the offspring had to compete, often to a disadvantage, with earlier emerging pink salmon fry. Nonetheless, we are now encountering them regularly in our rivers. On the Skagit, swinging or stripping Alaskabous, particularly the Showgirl or Pixie's Revenge has been effective, along with pink or purple Starlight Leeches or Barbell Egg Sucking Leeches. On spey or switch rods (or single handers with an OPST Commando Head set up) we like MOW tips in light, medium or heavy with the 5/5 configuration (5' of T-8, 11, or 14 and 5' of floating material). These short tips help give your fly more of a hop or jigging action on the retrieve than a longer length of sinking material. On a single hand rod, a 7' Sonar Leader in the 3 IPS (inches per second) or 6 IPS sink rate is a good choice. Now is the time of year when you don't really want to be fishing anything less than a 7 or 8 weight rod for salmon. Anything lighter is really hard on your gear, on you and mostly importantly, on the fish. On the Nooksack, especially the NF, you can target salmon using these same tactics or try one of our preferred methods for the type of water we commonly find on the smaller rivers. We opt for a floating line, one with a long enough taper to allow you to mend like the SA Infinity or Anadro lines, a strike indicator like the 3/4" or 1" Airlock or Centerlocks and a heavy fly like the Starlights or Alaskabous. Dead drift your fly just like you would nymphing for trout, adding an occasional twitch with the rod tip. This technique works incredibly well on smaller water and makes for a fun change up.
If salmon aren't your game, bulls, rainbows, cutthroat and whitefish are actively feeding on loose eggs drifting downstream. Fishing Glo Yarn Eggs, Lead Eyed Eggs or Slush Eggs below areas of concentrated spawning salmon or finding places where currents converge to funnel tumbling eggs to waiting predators is a very effective strategy for the next month. As always, take care to avoid walking through salmon redds (clear patches of clean gravel with a defined pit and tailing mound behind them) or bothering salmon that are working hard to produce future generations.
Lakes
We've been getting a lot of inquiries about the status of Pass Lake lately (we know, we'd love to be fishing it too). As of right now the water at the boat launch looks like somebody spilled a can of bright green paint and the lake is still closed for toxic algae. You can check the latest status on the Washington State Toxic Algae website. Lone, Cranberry, Grandy and Sqalicum are a handful of the local year round lakes open and available to fish if you have a stillwater itch to scratch. You can also check the WDFW Stocking Report as a handful of lakes, like Cranberry, typically get a plant of rainbow trout prior to Thanksgiving. Winter lake fly selection tends to be fairly simple as there are limited bug hatches during the colder late fall and winter months. Bloodworm patterns like Rowley's Holo Worm, BC Bloodworm or the Hot Worm fished near the bottom under an indicator can be really effective. If fishing a second fly, a Blob often fishes really well, either as an attractor pattern or to imitate the daphnia clusters trout will frequently feed on in the absence of other food sources. Black or white Bunny Leeches, Hale Bopps in wine, black, grey or brown and Hot Head Squirrel Leeches are some of our favorite winter fly patterns.
Salt
Most of our North Sound cutthroat are up in the rivers right now and next summer's beach coho season is but a distant dream. We find a handful of sea run bull trout in the North Sound during the winter but the beach scene typically won't pick up around here until springtime.