Flies for Chinook

With the strong history of of fly patterns tied for aesthetic value for steelhead and atlantic salmon, with long standing traditions for both, it has always confused me why there is a relative lack of such flies for chinook. My first fish was a king salmon, and most of my serious angling adventures have been centered around finding these fish in Alaskan waters. I think the beauty of these fish rivals all others, and I’d put a big King Salmon against any other game fish for pound for pound fighting quality. These purple backed and black spotted salmon are quite a sight to behold, and with large runs from the Sacramento River to Alaska’s Bristol Bay, they are very widespread. 

They have a reputation for being dour, hard to raise to a fly, mostly the prize of bait fisherman, an unsophisticated fish who, once tainted by freshwater, can only be tricked with roe. This is silly to me. Here are these anglers, who brave freezing winter rivers swollen with rain water, who go days or even weeks between steelhead, and they can’t be bothered to spend a warm early summer morning or a late fall day after a fresh rain to cast for a fish that is more brilliantly colored, much larger, and often more numerous than winter steelhead. 

Even when anglers do fly fish for chinook, they rarely dedicate time at the vise to honoring these fish. More often than not you’ll find an angler throwing some twist of rabbit fur that took 20 seconds to tie, or even a leftover steelhead pattern, a hand me down from winter’s fishing trips. Sure these flies will catch fish, rabbit’s combination of movement and durability is hard to beat, and chinook will come tot he same flies steelhead will, but I believe that a fish as powerful and beautiful as a King Salmon deserves time at the vise dedicated for it specifically. With that said, here are my four favorite patterns for tyee:

These are Intruder style tube flies tied by Stuart Anderson of Adipos Flytying. These are some of the more beautiful intruders I’ve seen. I usually like waddington shanks a little more than tubes, just a more elegant look, but the main features of these flies are the long flowing hackle and large silhouette. Originally designed by Ed Ward to tempt Alaska’s King Salmon, they are to wooly buggers what the spey fly is to the hairwing. I fish them on the swing, sometime even on a floating line, and usually give it a little strip right before it gets to the lie. These flies have amazing action in the water, and that little strip has made more than one dour springer eat. These flies also have the advantage of being non directional, they don’t have a top or bottom. This allows me to tie them with a lead underbody and not worry about the pattern tipping over in the current. 

I first encountered this fly, the Beauly Snowfly, in the color plates of Try Combs’ Steelhead Fly-Fishing. I fished it the first time in June on the Upper Quinault River. I was swinging for the late June run of winter steelhead, and in the snow swollen green silt of the upper quinault, I hooked my first king salmon on the fly. I saw the fish with four feet of fly line beyond my rod tip before it rolled and parted the leader. Since then the Beauly has been my most productive fly for kings. A classic salmon fly designed by Mr. Snowie in the mid 19th century, this fly has proven to be one of my favorites. It has a huge silhouette while still being sparse enough to sink quickly. If tied on a 5x heavy hook this fly can catch Chinook on a floating line in late summer’s low flows. 

Mike Orlowski has developed some great flies for steelhead, and though I generally shy away from such adaptations, it’s hard not to love his prawn flies for king salmon. The two lower flies are tied on waddington shanks, and the chartreuse one I am particularly interested in. I read somewhere once upon a time that when salmon first enter freshwater their vision is especially sensitive to green. I’ve done well enough with chartreuse flies in estuary portion of rivers to believe that, and I think Mikey’s Tiger Prawn is just about as good as it gets with fresh Kings.

There is a period each year on the Queets when the medium sized tributaries, the Sams and Salmon Rivers and Matheny creek, run low and crystal clear. The early kings stack up in the first pools off of the mainstem, and they are skittish as I’ll get out. You need a dark fly that will run stable but still raise a fish. Too big and you spook the fish, too small and it ignores you. The sweet spot is minuscule, and you usually miss three or four fish before you find it. On a day when you might only see five fish,t hat can be tricky. When this situation presents itself, I reach for the Akroyd. I don’t know what it is about this flies stingy hackle and divided wing, but it has a way with spooky kings.