Football season has officially arrived and, along with it, one of our favorite fishing seasons. There's so much I enjoy about this long-anticipated time of year. For starters, football to me represents a fine excuse to kick back and do nothing or at least very little. Like a lot of folks, I lead a fairly over-programmed existence and am always on the go be it for work or time on the water. After another very busy summer, it's nice to stop moving for a moment, put my feet up and watch the Seahawks play, with a big old bubbling pot of chili simmering on the stove, aromas of garlic and cumin wafting through my living room. I might even tie a few flies during the game, taking a few wraps during commercial breaks, feigning productivity but all the while maintaining the leisurely theme for the day.
Game days also make for a great opportunity to visit an otherwise busy salmon river. I can record the game and watch it after a memorable afternoon of fishing with more fish than people around. This works particularly well during the early season when folks are still excited and expectations run high. Should the Seahawks disappoint, more and more people skip the live action and the river can get busy again. I'm hoping for a banger year myself. The tricky part about this scheme is making it home from the water without someone inadvertently letting the proverbial cat out of the bag and spilling the beans on the outcome of the game. You must dodge calls from friends, keep your phone at arm's length and avoid population centers lest you encounter droves of high-fiving fans exiting a bar or, worse yet, swimming in a sea of expletives with heads hung low. If you're lucky, you have a banner day on the water, catch a few fish, revel in the colorful autumn landscape and make it home to enjoy a good football game. This is truly having your cake and eating it too.
Fall salmon fishing is upon us with hordes of pink and coho salmon entering our rivers. With the weather beginning to cool off a tad and the nights growing a little longer, the promise of trout fishing in our favorite lakes and streams once again dances on the horizon. There's still opportunity to chase salmon off the beaches through the end of September and we are beginning to see more and more bright coho making their way into the Sound. It's a great time to be getting out there to target a variety of species.
Thanks for another busy August at the fly shop. We can't seem to tie pink flies fast enough and while we still have a great supply, most days the old Regal vise in the back office is still smoking when the shop opens. We're sad to bid farewell to Teo for the season as he's off to college in Victoria but look forward to getting him back for a bit during the winter break. I imagine he's happy to enjoy a respite from tying salmon flies and getting constant grief about tracking pounds of fluorescent hot pink marabou into every nook and cranny of the shop. But we do miss him already! Thanks to everyone who turned out for our last spey Wednesday session in August. If you're looking to learn or bone up on your skills, we still offer one on one two-handed casting instruction on the river throughout the rest of the year. Send us an email to get something scheduled if you're interested. We had a great time at Terramar Brewing in Bow last month for the North Sound Trout Unlimited Casting Olympics and want to especially thank the Fourth Corner Fly Fishers for setting up and managing a really fun and challenging casting course. We are definitely looking forward to doing that again.
We're going to try to offer more fly tying activities in the fall and winter this year, starting with a beginner fall salmon fly tying class at the end of September. If you're fairly new to tying or have never tied flies for pink, coho or chum salmon, this is a great opportunity to learn. While the jury is out on whether tying or buying flies is less expensive for a lot of patterns, you can tie these flies for far less than it would cost to buy a box of them. These are some of my tried and true salmon patterns, simple to tie, relatively painless to lose and only a few of them are commercially available. All materials will be provided and you can sign up here. The International Fly Fishing Film Festival is also coming to the Lincoln Theater on Thursday, November 6th, so be sure to pencil that in on your fall calendars.
In the meantime, enjoy your time on the water, perhaps a football game or two if you're a fan and we hope to see you in the shop soon.
Rivers
It's prime time to chase pink salmon in the North Sound rivers right now and there are plenty of them around. The challenge of late has been poor visibility in the Nooksack and Skagit below the Sauk. Cooling weather should improve conditions but ideally, 1-2' of visibility would be a welcomed change for the better. The Skagit above the Dalles Bridge in Concrete will open on September 16th for salmon, which will provide more more opportunity to find salmon in clear water conditions. There seem to be plenty of coho in the system already as well as a bonus, though they can sometimes be more challenging to locate through all the pink salmon. The Snohomish watershed further south has been getting plenty of pinks too, so don't overlook that as an option either. In clearer water, smaller patterns like last month's fly of the month the Pink Fink, Hotshot Comets, Cohorts, Capital Punishment and the Tyee Crystal Terror will work best. In turbid water we prefer a larger profiled fly like the Barbell Egg Sucking Leech, Starlight Leech, Reverse Marabou, Pixies Revenge, Showgirl or Deuce Wigalo. The same flies work well for coho to an extent, but we'd also add some Coastal Buggers in olive, chartreuse, blue or purple, #8 Hot Bead Buggers in black or olive and a purple Egg Sucking Leech to your box.
September and October are fine times to pursue sea run cutthroat in the lower rivers around wood piles and root wads. Finding cutthroats or at least fishing for them through all the salmon can be challenging during big pink run. Look for sloughs and off channel areas with woody debris that are somewhat off of the main path of travel for salmon. We like to throw floating lines and unweighted or lightly weighted patterns to avoid snagging any salmon accidentally while looking for cutthroat. Reverse Spiders, Rolled Muddlers, Raccoons and Hot Bead Buggers are some of our favorite flies. You'll also find success skating big October Caddis dries like an orange Stimulator. There are still some bulls around this time of year too and your typical white Dali Llamas, Zonkers and Sir Sticks A Lot continue to be effective. Again, you're going to need to dodge a lot of pink salmon this month to find them. Often, higher in the system is better, at least until the pinks overrun those areas too.
With cooling weather, trout fishing on the Methow and Yakima should improve in September. Orange Stimulators, Chubby's in orange or gold, Gypsy Kings and Morrish October Caddis Adults are key dry flies to carry in addition to some smaller Parachute Adams and Purple Hazes. A handful of adult Cranefly patterns are also effective in the fall. Subsurface, swinging a Morrish Deep October Caddis Pupa, October Caddis or nymphing Pheasant Tails, Blowtorches and Fire Starter Perdigons is a good strategy. The beige MOP fly is also an excellent fall river pattern imitating both an October caddis pupa and a cranefly larva. Creeks remain open through the end of October still provide plenty of opportunity in the fall, especially if you're trying to avoid salmon or add a little foraging for chanterelles to your itinerary.
Lakes
As the nights grow longer and cooler, fall offers a great opportunity to revisit your favorite stillwaters that have been too hot to fish during the heart of summer. Large trout seek to pack in a few more calories before the cold winter months effectively put their appetites on ice. Unfortunately, one of our favorite local quality trout lakes, Pass Lake near Anacortes, is still closed due to a toxic algae bloom. You can monitor the Washington State Toxic Algae site for updates but based on the last couple of years, it'll likely be late November or December before it reopens to access. Fall hatches on stillwaters generally pale in comparison to spring, but you'll want to hit the lakes with a variety of leech patterns, including Hale Bopps, Chan's Ruby-Eyed Leech, BH Mini Leech, Chan's BMW's and Chan's Las Vegas Booby. Chironomids continue to hatch during the fall but are typically smaller, with patterns like the Ice Cream Cone or Cat's Fro-Yo in #18 being effective. Some days, you may find decent dry fly fishing during a midge hatch with Adult Midges, CDC Hatching Midge and Griffith's Gnats working well. Lastly, once in a while, you'll experience a water boatman fall on a lake during the autumn months. If it looks like it's raining on cloudless day, you'll want to fish a Floating Boatman on a sink tip or sinking line to experience some memorable fishing. Baitfish patterns like the Baby Fat Minnow or Franke Shiner also have a place in the fall lake box, particularly if you're heading to Ross Lake in the North Cascades in the next couple of months before the season closes on October 31st. Keep in mind the Perry Fire near Little Beaver Creek may create some smokey conditions up there.
Beaches
It's been an odd season along the beaches so far this year. Some days, fish have been travelling relatively close to the shore and on others are moving several hundred yards out. At least along the west side of Whidbey Island, the most productive tides lately have been during the couple of hours before the low and the high tides on days with a substantial tidal exchange. If you have the good fortune to fish from a boat, it's been pretty incredible most of the time. If not, you go when you can and eventually the stars align and you have good numbers of salmon travelling close to the beach. We are beginning to see pink numbers drop a little in the salt, but there are still a fair number of them moving through with the addition of a lot more fresh coho showing up. It's easy to overthink beach fly selection but a handful of Clousers in pink/white, chartreuse/white and pink/chartreuse is really about all you need in a few different sizes. Having a couple of flies with a trailing hook like the Deep Minnow Stinger is helpful as well. Some days these later-arriving coho are more inclined to nip at the back of your fly than aggressively attack it head on and the stinger hook can make all the difference between just a grab and an actual hook up.
