On Entomology and Salmonflies

Earlier today I read a post on The Caddis Fly blog talking about Deschutes redsides and Salmonflies. This made me chuckle. While the rest of the world is scrambling over itself to imitate the big summer hatches and pouring over hatch charts while planning their trips I am casting nondescript streamers and nymphs to fish who are put off the rise with the slightest wind chop.

On memorial day me and Shayna, my Photographer/significant other, went fishing on the south shore of Lake Quinault. One of the spots we fished was the mouth of Falls Creek. Upon arrival Shayna picked something up and said “Look at the size of this bug.” I looked over to see that she had picked up a Salmonfly, the first I’ve seen this year, that was nearly three inches long. I raised my eyebrows replied “yeah, those are suppose to be an important food source for trout.” and promptly tied on a streamer. 

It’s kind of funny to watch huge hatches of Caddis and see large spent Salmonflies and move rocks to see giant stonefly nymphs, only to imitate the small fish that are a much more important food source around here. The independent drainages of the North Pacific are like that. Not even the richest chalk streams can compete with the fertility of the marine realm, and our streams are far poorer insect wise. It just makes more sense for the fish to go to the ocean. 

Thats not to say that bugs are completely unimportant, October Caddis hatches are a blast fish in the fall, and chironomids catch trout when nothing else will induce a strike, but even when you have huge hatches with residual trout, like I see every year on Matheny Creek in the Queets basin, the adult trout will still take a swung spruce fly before they will rise to the most perfectly tied Adams or Comparadun, and you hook far less parr on the former.

Despite all this, my fly-fisherman’s blood won’t allow me to let something like salmonfly hatches go untested, and I have a few adapted Dee flies, tied with turkey feathers and a pale orange aft, ready to tease the June run of steelhead that are always in the Quinault when it opens in June. 

This is one of those ghost runs Doug Rose talk about in “The Color of Winter”, its not a large run, I would speculate no more than 500 fish, but it is an unmistakably specific run. These fish aren’t the kelts of spring, silver a virile, they are little power packed footballs fresh from the sea, and they are the mark of a summer that will inevitably be filled with steelhead and trout till September brings the first fresh push of coho, and another season wanes.