I had to fly to Denver last week for a business trip.  The time in Denver was great, learned a lot and met some amazing people.  However – the packed flights in both directions weren’t so hot.  Of course, I ended up catching something and I’m still only half-recovered.  This weekend, the weather turned cloudy with moderate temps and combined with lower flows, I had a feeling that one of my favorite streams would be firing for dry fly fishing…

…I was right.  A reasonable hike got me into some nice water and zero other people.  I lost count of how many small cutthroat I caught but I also caught three memorable fish, very nice sized for this river.  One other that ‘felt’ even heavier than those was hooked but immediately came unstuck.  Funny thing was that the smaller 10″ fish were the better fighters, some of those little guys spent as much time in the air as in the water, just jumping everywhere.  The bigger fish mostly bulldogged it in the normal cutthroat sort of way.

My ‘confidence fly’ has become a small stimulator variant that I came up with this spring.  It’s has an olive abdomen with just a little sparkle and a darker, peacock herl thorax.  Coachman brown hackle in the back and grizzly in the front.  The wing and tail are in natural or even better dun colored yearling elk.  Since it’s such a natural color, I also tie in a small tuft of hot pink or chartreuse antron on top of the wing for visibility.  I keep trying other flies on these rivers but nothing seems to produce like this stimulator.  In 14 and 16 sizes, it imitates everything.  For the small Western Washington streams, I could probably get by with just a few of these and a couple soft-hackle spiders…

Set a heat record in Seattle tody at 94deg F.  Of course like 95% of the houses around here, we don’t have AC.  Hot nights like we had this weekend were better back in Sweet Home Alabama ’cause everywhere has AC…

Given the heat and the fact that I had already fished three times this week, I gave the warm little trouts a break this weekend.  I just tried to move as little as possible.  I did finish up some summer steelhead flies for a swap over on Washington Flyfishing.  Been a while since I tied any steelhead flies and it’s got me itchin’ to get out there with my two-hander.  Might be time to take my first trip down to the Grande Ronde or Clearwater?

I did make good on one of my New Year’s resolutions – to take someone out who has never tried flyfishing and help them catch a trout on a dry fly.  Hit a small stream with a friend from work and she got the hang of it pretty quick.  Learning to cast and fish at the same time especially with a crap teacher, isn’t the easiest thing in the world but she hooked several small trout and landed one pretty little cutthroat.

Pre-meeting chit chat at work on Friday morning and someone remarked the the drizzly gloom was forecast to remain in effect all weekend.  They looked at me like I had three arms when I expressed my excitement at the prospect of a rainy weekend.  Especially when it’s Sea Fair…  I could give a damn about hydro races or the Blue Angels, I was thinking about fishing.  I was actually hoping for what my dear departed gandfather called a ‘turd floater’  to bring the S-Rivers up a notch and maybe push in a new batch of Summer-run Steelhead.  I have yet to break out a spey rod this Summer and I’m starting to get the itch to chase unicorn-fish…

Headed up to the home water Friday after work and enjoyed a very not rainy sunset along with a few willing Coastals and a couple small Brookies.  Didn’t throw dries much, mainly swung a soft hackle.  Zen fishing…  I tried a spot close to the road that I never fish because I figure there will be too many people.  I was right, there were three other fly fisherman in sight at different times. That’s three too many more than I usually see at my more normal spots…

Saturday, Mom, Aika and I had dinner with a new batch of Leadership 1000 scholars, a program administered by the College Success Foundation.  I’m incredibly lucky to be able to sponsor several scholars.  I got to meet three of them at the dinner and it was awesome.  I’m sure they are going to do great things in college and I feel privileged to have been able to help in a small way.

No big rain, just some drizzle so Sunday was for the troots, not the Steelheads.  Hiked into a beautiful bouldery run and picked a bunch of nice Coastals from the pocket water.    Came home and found that the women-folk had whipped up some Pakistani-style lamb curry.  Man, what a great weekend!

I’ve taken Aika fishing plenty of times, Angus too.  However, I think today was the first time I’ve taken them both at the same time.  They are independent enough now that I can bring them both and still actually do some fishing myself…  Other than an ill advised and slightly sketchy river fording, today was a good day.  Aika was the top angler by a mile.  Angus was having skunk-luck and missed/lost several nice fish so I started putting him on the best lies.  Aika would fish the ‘bad’ water and caught two to our none every time.  She must have caught 10 or so.  I ended up catching one ‘king of the pool’, a nice 14″ Coastal cutthroat which is almost huge for this river.  I wish Angus had been able to land one but he was the missed-strike & LDR skunkee today.