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Skagit River - September 11th, 2005
supplied by: Dickson Flyfishing Steelhead Guides
FISHING: Good
"Zig & Zag"
All over the place, really. Lower Stilly has good numbers of salmon.......even the Coho are showing.
North Fork is quite good for Searun Cutthroat. Maybe not the numbers as the tidewater, but good nonetheless. Flies: All types of baitfish patterns are working. Less is more. Keep them small. The Humpies are moving in. Glue Egg patterns will turn on here for the Cutthroat, as the little salmon starts spawning. Try fishing the riffley heads that drop into significant pools. Fish will start to congregate around the mouth of their tributaries soon.
Lower Snoqualmie will take some SRC after this rain. Lower Cowlitz is smoking. Not all hatchery programs are bad.
Lower Skagit has some color but the salmon are in. If you were thinking the fishing was going to be like two years ago, you are going to be disappointed. If you have to catch Pinks, head over to the Skykomish. That is what everybody else is does.
Upper Skagit can be a real sleeper for the Marblemount bound steelhead, fishing the surface will avoid most of the salmon. I riffle hitch the fly and keep it small. Some days you will find them, some days you won't that's why it is called "fishing."
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Skagit River - June 28th, 2005
supplied by: Dickson Flyfishing Steelhead Guides
FISHING: Good
water levels - click here
Skagit: The upper river hatchery Chinook fishery continues from Marblemount to Rockport. As much as I love fishing, this bait & barb fishery, has me worried about the impact on the Dolly/Bulls we were catching since Christmas.
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Skagit River - June 4th, 2005
supplied by: John's Guide Service
FISHING: Good
River Levels - click here
Skagit River:
River Conditions:
Normal Flows.
- Skagit above the Sauk has 6-9 feet of visibility right now.
- Skagit below the Sauk has less 4-6 feet of visibility below the Mixer.
Fishing Report:
Although closed during the month of May, reports already coming in of Kings in the upper river along with quite a few downstreamer steelies.
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Skagit River - May 1st, 2005
supplied by: John's Guide Service
FISHING: Good
River Levels - click here
Skagit River:
River Conditions:
Normal Flows.
- Skagit above the Sauk has 4-5 feet of visibility right now.
- Skagit below the Sauk has less than a foot of visibility below the Mixer.
Fishing Report:
Fishing has been fairly good on the Skagit over the last few weeks for steelhead and we've already seen and caught a couple of Springers as well. Dollie Varden / Bull Trout fishing has drastically improved as the smolt & fry are now out and about.
Spring run off has started and the river is cloudy.
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Skagit River - May 1st, 2005
supplied by: Dickson Flyfishing Steelhead Guides
FISHING: Good
water levels - click here
"Spring Run-off"
Finished up the Sauk / Skagit Catch & Release. More fish are coming now. The Sauk has been blown for the last few days, and of course that put everybody on the Skagit. I do want to thank you Mr. WDFW for allowing us an opportunity to fish. Sure, we had our tuff days, and there were times it seemed we were All out there.....but hey, sometimes it is the bad days that make us appreciate the good ones. We were fishing, and we did find some big fish, memories. Maybe next year, we can open up more native release waters.......it took all of us out there to demonstrate, we are not just an after-thought fishery. Kudo's to all that worked so hard to make it happen. Remember, 90% of what happens in steelhead management is politics.....glad to see those who view us, "as helping". We are the future.
Speaking of back......I floated the North Fork Stilly from Fortson down to Whitman Bridge, the other day. Winter floods were not kind. You are going to see a lot of changes in the stream corridor. It is going to take a while before this snow water, allows the flows to recede to summer levels. Last year it came a month early......this year should be the same. Pray the snow pack comes off slowly.
I was emailed the other day, where would I look to find early summer steelhead in 2005. This is what I wrote: I would fish the hatchery waters around Fortson, first.....seems like every year, the hatchery steelhead shoot on up to their imprinting waters, faster than the year before. With the volume of water the fish will get, to help travel.......they will jet. The summer wilds will coming later, when the water drops and warms.....this is a good time to fish below Deer Creek.....of course, any time the water is clear enough to fish, its a good time to fish below Deer Creek. My favorite water in early June is the Skykomish.
I get asked all the time, if the spawning escapement is so poor......why are we catching so many dark wild winter steelhead in the Sky and Stilly, when it opens in June? When management has killed off the early portion the runs, year after year........nature responds by producing later fish. The other explanation of course is perhaps, the steelhead population wasn't as small as hoped......I mean "projected."
Anyway, I look for good summer steelhead returns in both hatchery and wild, for both the Stilly and the Skykomish Rivers. For you North Fork floaters......be careful! As I mentioned, there has been many river channel changes, and with the flows up.....you better be good on your sticks.
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Skagit River - April 22nd, 2005
supplied by: Pacific Northwest Sportfishing
FISHING: Fair
Just when you think you've seen it all something new pops up that totally blows your mind. Buzz, Joe and I were sitting in the pouring down rain Saturday morning watching the rods wiggle and wishing the rain would let up when suddenly the center rod launches straight out of the boat. It cleared the bow and hit the water 10 to 15 feet downstream of the boat, racing off downstream with a rooster tail behind it. Acting quickly Joe and Buzz grabbed the other two rods and swung the plugs in front of the missile to try to hook it up and save the rod. Joe must've been livin' the clean life lately because his plug with one single hook on it latched onto the reel and we pulled the rod in with fish in tow. After all that I attempted, several times, to knock it off with the net and we still miraculously landed the fish, which was somewhere around 16 pounds. Holy schnikeys!
Thankfully the rest of the week was a lot less eventful than that. The warm weather has put color back in the Sauk and with that steelhead have been moving again. We've spent most of our time either on the Sauk or on the Skagit below the Sauk, though we pulled one day this past week on the upper Skagit that I'd rather erase from the log book. Clear and spooky up there, as usual. Fish are moving and you're likely to find them in anything that remotely resembles holding water. They've seen every plug in the book by now and drift fishing seems to be drawing more strikes than anything
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Skagit River - April 11th, 2005
supplied by: Dickson Flyfishing Steelhead Guides
FISHING: Fair
water levels - click here
Weather: One day it's spring and the next it is winter again. As long we keep adding snow to the mountains and it isn't blowing our rivers out, that works for me.
Busy week:
Mike was fishing local this week. Sauk, Skagit and Jeff's Ponds. Jonathan & Darrel both were fishing the Sauk, and I spent a "Hal's week" fishing the Skagit. Well, we did fish the Sauk one morning, but no takers there. I do want to thank the boys who came out to share the day(s) with Hal. It was a great time.
Mike is back out on the OP this week. He will be fishing rivers from the Sol Duc on the North end to the Queets on the South. Have you heard the rumor the Queets is going to a "wild steelhead release"? I am more than curious how the Quinault Tribe is going to respond to this new policy.
Darrel & Jonathan will remain with me back on the local waters. Fishing is all dependent on the freezing levels and it looks like the weather is primed to put even more snow in the mountains.
The upper Skagit is gin clear. Not an easy proposition unless you can fish the first and last 15 minutes of the day. I call this the "Chinook Bite." You either get it done at the beginning or it doesn't happen. We don't have the steelhead in the upper watershed as days of old, but it really is lovely water.
Your better shot at steelhead is below the Sauk River confluence. Lower visibility and a chance at the returning Sauk River steelhead.
Flies: I like blues, purples and black when the light is off the water, and red and pinks when the light is on. Probably the most misunderstood concept in steelhead flyfishing is based around the question
"So what's the hot fly?" I wrote an article on this called Steelhead Flies Fact & Fiction
The water temperature on the Skagit at 10 am the other morning was hovering at 43 degrees so that wonderful April 50 degree stuff hasn't happened with this late but happy winter scene.
The Upper Sauk is still a mess. Braided channels and silted pools. Not a pretty picture.
The middle section is a little better. At least it has some rocks to it. The three good pools are hit by the Dawn Patrol, so good luck getting first water here.
The lower section doesn't have the gradient to really flush the tons of sediment so most of this section is traveling water. The good news is the created alluvial fans created in each tailout has completely blocked off the upstream travel of the jet sleds so at least we don't contend there.
Trees & et al. are still leafing out. Fish are moving and spring is trying, so there you go.
A happy note: With the Yakima River fishing well, most of the anglers have taken off to the east side. The C&R rivers are more deserted now. Tuff gig unless your into that solitude, thing.
Best of fishing,
D-son & the boys flyfishsteelhead.com
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Skagit River - April 11th, 2005
supplied by: Pacific Northwest Sportfishing
FISHING: Good
The Skagit system overall has produced consistent catches of steelhead for just about everyone since our last report. The April push of steelhead is definitely happening and we've even heard reliable reports of a couple spring kings caught the last few days. The earliest we've ever caught kings is April 1st, so it's no surpise that there are a few around. The kings we've heard of lately have all been caught plugging.
We were also greeted by a couple of antlerless bucks that swam across the river to pay us a visit on Thursday while we flyfished. We had three swim in front of us in the exact same spot a few days earlier. Hmmmm!
Part of fishing the weekend isn't only working around a lot of other boats, it also means that there's a good chance one or two of them won't know much about river etiquette, or maybe they don't care. Dropping in below a boat pulling plugs, or below anyone fishing for steelhead, isn't really going to win you many ribbons at the county fair. The sad thing is that if you say anything you're the bad guy, let alone blow a gasket. The other one I love is the guy that emails me for advice and then rubbernecks us all day long. Good stuff!
We'll probably start putting Snohomish River silver trips on the calendar sometime soon for this coming fall. There's usually fishable numbers of silvers in the Sno by the middle of September, and sometimes earlier if we get some rain. We're still up in the air whether we'll have a Skagit silver season, so for now I'm planning on splitting time between the Snohomish for silvers and the Clearwater and Snake for steelhead in September/October/November. We'll be taking Clearwater bookings once we get the paperwork back, which should be very soon.
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Skagit River - April 1st, 2005
supplied by: Pacific Northwest Sportfishing
FISHING: Good
We finally got our rain in the Skagit Valley and the hills are getting a full dose of snow. I have a feeling we cashed in our April weather in February. We cancelled trips over the weekend and early this week due to high water, winds, and generally unruly weather conditions. The Sauk has been out since last Saturday night and with more rain in the forecast will probably stay that way until we see a few days of dry weather. This rain ought to be just the ticket to bring in our April run of steelhead, however.
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Skagit River - March 28th, 2005
supplied by: Dickson Flyfishing Steelhead Guides
FISHING: Fair
water levels - click here
"Now there is something you don't see every day. "
I was curious to see how the rivers responded after the big rain last night. The cold front pushed a bunch of snow in the mountains (lets hope it can stay there). The Sauk @ Sauk is flowing at 3,890 cfs, and the Skagit above the confluence is only running at 3,810 cfs. Weird. Not often you will find the tributary larger than the mother stream.
Mike, the boys, and I have fishing the Sauk and the Skagit, respectively. Typical steelheading, but the weather fronts, have these north sound rivers raising and dropping from this last storm. We all seemed to find a fish here and there, but all had to work for them. These weather fronts can really keep you on your toes, but if you know where to fish under various conditions, it can be golden.
Fishing pressure has been moderate on the overall, for both the Skagit and the Sauk, although I did see a bunch of campers and power boats pull into the Howard Miller Steelhead Park, on Saturday. The Dawn Patrol has been sneaking around the Sauk.
The water above the Sauk is Gin clear and the fishing, tuff. Water below is good but lots of power boats out. Love to tell you things have changed in flies and gear. It has not. Yancy lines flat get it done. Water temps. still in the lower 40's. Reading water and presentation is key. Look for water with rocks and soft current seams. Steelhead naturally look for protection as water drops and clears. Our guides are doing well on the traditional flies as well as the articulated leeches. Find these bad boys at Streamsideflyshop.com.
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