On Steelhead Fly Selection

When approaching a trout stream, even those clear, easily spooked chalk streams, the fly you choose is based on sound, observational logic. You select the food item most likely to take the trout. If the water is covered in mayflies, you tie on something that approximates their appearance. Even if the water is blank, a good nymph or a juicy terrestrial presented in a lifelike manner will take fish. The trout angler, often armed with a knowledge of entomology sufficient to teach it at the college level, can almost always choose a fly that is logical. The trout eats stonefly nymphs, so I will choose a fly that imitates a stonefly nymph. I will work the fly in the water to the best of my ability to further imitate that stonefly nymph. If all goes well my fly will look and move like the real thing, thus inducing a strike.

Steelhead are far less cut and dried. Why steelhead take flies is one of the great mysteries of the natural world. Convincing an animal to put something in his mouth when he no longer has any interest in feeding seems like a fools errand, however it is precisely this unlikely venture that makes steelheading the great sport that it is. This begs the questions, what fly do you choose to make a fish eat that has no interest in eating? What is appetizing to the anorexic? That is obviously a facetious and silly question, but its a question the steelheader must ask himself on each and every trip to the river. 

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.  

Fry Patterns

As I’ve said in earlier postings, one of the most important hatches to imitate in our waters is the fry outmigration. In Puget Sound the Pink and Chum fry provide an important food source for Sea-Run cutthroat, and the King and Coho outmigrations can make for some excellent fishing in our coastal waters.

No where is this hatch as important as on Lake Quinault in spring. Always spawning in systems with a large lake, Sockeye Salmon are plankton feeders, and their plankton feeding, lake dwelling young are an important food source for adfluvial cutthroat and charr. When writing about Lake Quinault this past week it occurred to me the five things I value most in a fishery. Firstly my favorite fisheries all produce larger than average fish, that one is kind of a given. Secondly I like them to be wild fish, preferably trout or salmon. Thirdly I like to connect with some part of fly-fishing history, whether that means casting Cotton’s Green Drake on a spring creek or swinging a Glasso Spey on the Sol Duc, I just like to relive the fishing and flies of the masters and legends of our sport. In addition to these I like the fishery to be secluded, and lastly I like that fishery to provide a good deal of challenge. 

Fishing the fry hatch on Lake Quinault really hits on all five of these. There are days when I troll a grey ghost in an old row boat just like they used to in Maine. I catch wild trout, some of the charr reach 10 pounds, and some days I see more fish in hand than I do other anglers. However, it isn’t all peaches and cream. The early season on Lake Quinault often sees the lake high and dirty, and fish can be scattered, also, it takes a truly skilled oarsman to work the fly right in a 40 mile per hour headwind, which we see often on the Lake. 

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.