Notes from the Canyon

April 14, 1999

Went to the Yakima on Tuesday in hopes of hitting the March Browns. The day started out bright, sunny, and cool but seemingly full of potential blowing in on the Ellensburg wind.

And the wind blew.

The wind blew with the force of a dozen Whitehouse interns. It blew like a Boeing wind tunnel. It blew like a tornado that had lost its sense of direction. We fully expected to see cows blowing by, or perhaps the house from "Wizard of Oz." It blew in random directions, up the canyon, down the canyon, and cross-wise. When it blew upstream, it pushed the boat backwards against the current. When it blew downstream, it carried us so fast that we wished in vain for a fresh-water river barracuda to come along, knowing that no other fish could possibly move fast enough to catch our flies. It was the mother of all winds. It was wind-ilicious. It blew so hard it sucked. And then, adding insult to injury, the March Browns started to come to the surface around 1:30. The gale-force winds swamped the poor little buggers almost as soon as they hit the surface, as minature whitecaps broke all around them. Fish refused to rise, perhaps out of fear that they'd be blown clear out of the water and end up hitching a ride on the BNSF to Seattle. The wind put more of a bow in my 9' 5 wt than a runaway chum working its way back to salt water. For a brief moment, as we waited out the wind in the Rock Garden, the wind let up and a few fish started to make splashy rises. I made a few less-than delicate casts and managed to hook my only fish of the day, a beautiful 16" rainbow that has to rank among the most colorful fish I've ever pulled out of the Yakima. It almost made the wind tolerable.

Almost.

And then the wind returned, blowing us the rest of the way down the river, making perfunctory 10 foot casts along the way (I use the term "cast" loosely; in this wind, one picks up their line until the wind lays it out horizontally, then lays the line back onto the water and salvages what one can of the drift). Would've been a great day on the river if the wind had let up for an hour. Instead, it was merely memorable.

And still worth skipping a day of work for.

April 9, 1999

I stopped in the Canyon around dusk while driving home from Tri-Cities on 4/28. Since the river was reputed to be blown out, I had intended to simply soak in the local ambience, sit next to the river and watch the moon rise over the canyon walls. If I was lucky, I'd get to listen to some coyotes and then be on my way. I had no intention of fishing.

So, I pulled over near the cable ferry upstream from Umptanum and sat down on a rock to watch the river roll by. It wasn't long, however, until one after another, large trout heads began poking up in the river all around me. Like a thousand elk-hair caddis and a couple of baseball hats before them, my good intentions were quickly swept downstream. At least a dozen fish appeared to be working the 30 feet of river within earshot, and many of the fish I saw were exceptional specimens. These were not juvenile "let's see if I can jump out of the water" rises, neither were they sipping rises; instead they were slow, deliberate rises exposing the snout, eyes and gill plates of mature trout that had obviously done this before.

I was pretty certain that they were feeding on something sub-surface, but they looked like a pod of Orcas trying to get a visual fix on their location, and given the murky quality of the Yakima right now, that might have been their intent. Not to mention, some of these fish were of near-Orca like proportions!

Well, maybe that's a slight overstatement, but let's agree that the winter was kind to at least some of our Yakima river fishy friends, they appear to have fattened up nicely. I ran back to the car to string up my brother's 5 wt St Croix, on loan to me since his daughter reduced my Reddington to graphite splinters with his truck door (By the way, Bill -- I'm taking my time getting my rod fixed because I like your St. Croix better). I started with a BWO at the end of 12' of leader tapered to 5x. I know I should have tied on an emerger or nymph since I didn't see any bugs on the surface, but I didn't have any emerger or nymph patterns with me (to quote Homer Simpson: "doh!").

I worked my way through BWO to caddis to a stonefly pattern, all without a rise. It was getting darker and darker, and as the fish splashed all around me I got more and more desperate. I cursed the fact that I didn't have any nymphs with me. Of course, it is fact of life that after 20 years of flyfishing, I still can't catch fish on nymphs to save my life. But at my level of experience, if I am not catching fish, I should at least have the smarts to not catch them with the right fly!

Utterly frustrated by the failure to even tease a rise from one of these giants, I resorted to the "big fish, big fly" school of thought (which is slightly more refined than the "big fish, big slimy nightcrawler" school of thought and slightly less expensive than the "big fish, M-80" school of thought). I tied on a 2" weighted black bunny leach, tied on a #2 hook complete with weed guard. I picked up the fly when I was flyfishing for Muskie in Wisconsin a few years ago. I actually caught a 34" Muskie on a fly much like it once in the middle of a snowstorm, on my first attempt at Muskie flyrodding - but I've never used it for trout. These days I keep the fly in my fishing hat, not because it's all that useful, but because it looks so damn cool.

Needless to say, this was not my usual approach to fishing the Yakima, but desperate times call for desperate measures.... The fly was a little oversized for my 5 wt. The rod bent and cracked with each backcast, and I could hear the fly whiz by my ear before it plopped into the river with a noisly splash.

But, on the second cast, as soon as the fly hit the water a wake came up behind it and I watched in amazement as a large trout bit down on the trailing fur rather an inch behind the hook. The fish swirled away without tasting the cold steel of the hook, but while I had missed the fish, I had found the secret! It was a bunny leech hatch!

Newly inspired, fished the big fly dowstream and across, and I had two other attempted takes on the downstream swing as the darkness closed in around me. Half an hour later I was still fishless (and still clueless) but I'd decided that I was pushing my luck casting this heavy, giant fly on a (borrowed) 5 wt rod. I figured sooner or later my luck would run out and I would either break the rod or give myself a concussion. I finally gave in to the darkness and headed back in the dark up the canyon towards I-90 and home to Port Orchard. It wasn't the first time the Yakima had denied me, and it certainly won't be the last.

There are those who say that fishing without catching is like going out on a date without getting laid, but anyone who thinks that means there's no thrill in it has forgotten what it was like to be a horny teen-age virgin (and we ALL started out that way). Even for us middle-aged farts, Anticipation is sometimes infinitely more interesting than actualization, after all.... But enough amateur philosophy. The point of this story, was that despite the high flows and poor water clarity on the Yakima right now, it did seem more fishable than, say, last May when it was pure mud. It is also notable that there was a LOT of surface (or near-subsurface) activity at dusk that a better prepared or more skilled angler could have taken advantage of. Tight lines.

May 9, 1999

Stopped at Umptanum at ~ 3 p.m. on May 9, en-route to Tri-Cities for a Monday morning business meeting. The whole family was along, and it WAS Mother's day, so fishing time was severely limited (while it's true that there's very little that I love more than flyfishing, they all happened to be in the car waiting). I walked downstream a few hundred yards and poked my head through the bushes to check out the river. At least five nice trout were steadily rising to small mayflies (PMD's??) in the slow water a foot from the shore. I strung up w/ a #18 BWO (closest imitation I had) and 7x tippet (which was probably over-cautious considering the cloudiness of the water) and proceeded toward the river. Well, that was my intent, anyway. In fact, I proceeded to spook the fish as I not-so-quietly fell on my ass trying to make it the last 5 feet down the bank. Even so, a pair of nice trout continued to rise about 15 feet upstream. I couldn't get a backcast because of the brush, but was able to lay out enough line with a rollcast, and laid the fly down about 3 feet upstream of the last place I'd seen a rise. Three roll-casts later, I had a 14" trout on the end of the line. It jumped several times and I eventually landed and released it, but those are just details.

To me the essence of flyfishing will always be that crystalline moment when a trout appears from the shadows and takes the fly. At that moment, the entire universe collapses into that single point where fish and fly connect, and the world becomes much simpler.

I made a few more casts and caught another small fish, but decided that since it was Mother's Day I should treat this as a test of character, and avoid the "just one more cast" syndrome. So I headed back to the car, and we drove on down the road. But I suspect from this limited sampling that it was a great day on the Yakima on Sunday.

It certainly was for me.

June 14, 1999

Went drifting on the Yakima on Sunday, 06/13/99 with brother Bill and his buddy Gary. Put in at Ringer at 11:00 a.m. and set off down the river at a frantic pace, propelled by high water and fast currents (guesstimated at 6500 cfs?). Water was cloudy but not unbearably so -- much better than a couple of weeks ago. Watched modest hatch of PMD's around 1:00 but the fish didn't seem very interested -- a couple of hits but nothing big. Saw a few large stone fly naturals, but had little luck with fishing Stimulators and Madame X's. Also saw some yellow sallies, not in huge numbers, but enough to notice, though the fish didn't seem to be paying attention. That's OK -- we were there for the afternoon caddis hatch anyway, so we anchored off the Rock Garden and watched the river run for a couple of hours, soaking up the sun and half-heartedly nymphing or casting emergers to the occassional early-bird trout. Few people on the river, and little to no wind, which became a problem later on in the evening.

Finally around 3 p.m, the caddis started gathering in the stream-side branches, making dive-bombing runs at the river surface and occassionally crashing and burning on the surface. As a few fish started to rise, we started fishing in earnest, and managed to get several fish up. By 7:30 p.m. the fishing was good (not EXCELLENT, but good enough) with some larger fish moving into the usual spots. Pulled off a sort of hat trick with the three of us landing three nice (10-15 inches) trout in as many casts to the same spot (in descending size order, even -- alpha fish first, down to the ten incher who moved in to replace his bigger buddies). Size 14-16 tan elk-hair seemed to do the trick, though a caddis emerger that I used as a dropper to the main dry fly did pick up a lot of hits and a couple of them were nice fish. On the pool above Umptanum Bridge, the emerger was particularly effective on the swing downstream, just at the start of the swing.

Around 8 p.m. we pulled off the river briefly to take care of certain bodily necessities, and were quickly swarmed by the most vicious gang of attack mosquitoes I've seen outside Alaska! These bugs were so bad the caddis huddled together in the upper branches for protection, afraid to venture out amidst these bullies. We quickly did our business and took off downstream, hoping to put some distance between ourselves and the little bloodsuckers. I have to admit that I even regretted all the times I'd cursed the Ellensburg wind, wishing that just this once it would pay us a visit to (literally) blow these little bastards away. We ended up at Red's around 9 p.m. No one admitted to keeping count of the fish they'd caught but I'd guess it was 10-15 each, with each of us catching at least one of 14" or more (but not MUCH more). More importantly, we caught some fish that were high on the Butner Scoring System, ie., technically difficult, in tight spots, predicted ahead of time, on first casts, on long distance casts, or otherwise making up in satisfaction what they lacked in bulk. My last fish of the night (12") took the fly so close to the shore that when it was hooked, it jumped right out of the water onto the bank for a moment, before jumping back into the water where I eventually landed and released it. All in all a very nice day on the Yakima.

July 10, 1999

Fished the Yakima on two consecutive evenings 7/07 and 7/08 on my way to/from Tri-Cities. Fished from approx. 7 p.m. to dusk (9:30-9:45 p.m.) both nights, coyotes howling in the distance and few anglers on the water. The River is looking good, don't know what the flow rate is but it is down substantially from mid-June. Clarity was surprisingly good -- standing in waist-deep water I could see the shape of my boots and make out the larger rocks. Concentrated my effort on a feeding lane about a mile upriver from Roza. This spot has always held good sized fish in the past, though they can be picky eaters. Tan caddis were present in large numbers, though they were spending all their time above the water rather than on or in it. As a result, I saw few rising fish. That should have been a sign to fish deep, but as usual I was too stubborn to spend much time nymphing. I did float several variations on caddis emerger patterns with little success; also spent some time working a stimulator above a bead-head caddis emerger. Few or no rises to any of the above.

As darkness set in, I made a couple of casts with my favorite deer hair mouse, in hopes that some monster trout would get greedy. Nuthin! But, hey, it's worth a try! Not willing to go home skunked on two consecutive nights, I zipped upriver to my favorite spot (in the vicinity of Umptanum bridge). As usual, it paid off, and I caught and released two nice fish in the space of 10 minutes. One (12-13") was on a caddis emerger fished upstream with bright yarn strike indicator 6' above the fly; the other (very fat 16") was on a #14 EHC fished in the exact same spot. Both fish were caught on roll casts less than 10 feet from where I was standing, underscoring the fact that you don't have to cast far in order to catch fish! Unfortunately, the second fish managed to jump all over the place, drawing the attention of another fisherman upstream, and chasing away all the other fish in the spot. After a couple of "just one more" casts, I was done for the night and back to my car by the time the 9:45 BNSF freight train rolled by on its way towards Yakima.

August 03, 1999

Took what has lately become a weekly trip from Port Orchard to Tri-Cities for work on Monday August 2. Left Port Orchard under cover of darkness at 4:30 a.m. so I could sneak in 30 minutes of fishing before my 10 a.m. meeting over at Hanford. Fished from the banks near Milepost 19 in the Canyon, dropping a stimulator (size 8) in the foam line. Caught one 12" fish on about the third cast, leaving me to wonder if my boss would notice if I missed the meeting (she never pays attention to what I say anyway.....). Decided to be a grown-up and go to work, despite the promise of a good day on the river. Suffered through the work day thinking about hitting the canyon on the return trip; by the time I got back to the Canyon at Milepost 15 (above Red's) it was 7:30 p.m. and the wind was blowing hard and hot. Could see some rises amongst the whitecaps, so I did what I could with short casts and downstream/downwind drifts. Fished until approx. 8:45 p.m. and managed to get a couple of 10" fish on #14 caddis. Fishing was not nearly as good as last week, but I think the wind had a lot to do with it, because I saw a lot of rises, just couldn't get them to take. Hard to get a drag-free drift in 20 knot winds, and when you can't see your fly on the water because of the chop. I guess the other factor could be that I was fishing 5x tippet instead of my usual 6x or finer -- will one size tippet really make that big of a difference on the Yakima? On the way home through the canyon, noticed some very large mayflies above the water, just before dark. Looked like pictures I've seen of green drakes, but couldn't grab one for good i.d. River is in nice shape, reasonably clear, very plentiful bugs (as evidenced by the front grill of my Mazda this a.m.) and very wadable for summertime!

September 09, 1999

Fished the dreaded Frustration Flats (the slow water above Umptanum with the flagrant but picky fish) on Wed evening while coming home from Tri-Cities. Had only about an hour to fish. Managed to get quite a few rises on #16 Elk Hair Caddis, but missed the majority of them due to general incompetence and a complete absence of sleep in the previous 30 hours (it's busy at work these days). But, I did manage to catch a couple of fish in the 12" range despite myself. The best fish, though, was the last one of the evening just as it got dark. After trying to tie on a new caddis in the dark, and not being entirely sure I had tied it on well, I started casting cross-stream to a fish that had been taunting me, making a real point of rising about 15 feet away from me. On the first drift, I saw a rise, set the hook and felt -- for no more than a millisecond -- the fish and hook come together in space and time.

Then the line went limp.

Oh well, so much for my knot! Next time I'll bring a flashlight. But on retrieving my line, I found the fly still there. Even better, the fish wasn't spooked, and within minutes it (or it's stunt double) was back, rising every 30 seconds or so, close enough to see it despite the growing darkness. About 5 casts later we hooked up, this time for real. The fish took off dowsntream, peeling line off my cheap Pfleuger until it sounded like the transmission on a 40 year old school bus. Somewhere before it got to Umptanum, though, it started coming back upstream. Several splashy jumps made it clear it was a nice fish, and I played it gently, protecting both my highly suspect knot and the 7x tippet it was tied with. Finally, I got the fish back to my hand, where I was pleased to see that it was a fat 16" fish -- no trophy, but very satisfying, especially since I landed it just as a guide and his clients floated by (a fish caught within eyeshot of another fisherman are ALWAYS worth more points, especially if they haven't caught any).

September 30, 1999

Back when she was alive, and I was at the UW studying chemical engineering, my mother would occassionally call early in the morning before school to remind me that the number of fish on your salmon punch card was every bit as important as your Grade Point Average (easy for her to say -- SHE wasn't paying my tuition!). 15 years later, I look back on those days that I skipped class to fish the Sky and Snohomish with her, and realize that even though I hardly ever keep a fish anymore, she was right about fishing being an important measure of who you are.

So, hoping to instill the same values in my sons Ryan (15) and Sean (11), I pulled them out of school for a day to fish the Yakima and see what the trout could teach us. It was Sean's first trip down the Yak; Ryan's a veteran of four trips and while not an avid flyfisher has developed a pretty good instinct for where the fish are.

We floated the stretch from Bighorn to Red's, putting in at Bighorn at noon. It was beautiful day but the fish were NOT looking up, and we saw few rising fish. There were quite a few stoneflies about, including a couple that were on the raft with us for part of the trip, and we saw a lot of October Caddis towards 4-5 p.m. Between the three of us we landed only 3 trout of any size, the largest perhaps 14 inches and taken purely by luck while I was preoccupied with giving Sean a "crash" (literally) lesson in how to navigate a raft around submerged rocks. This fish hit a #8 orange stimulator that had become waterlogged and was certainly dragging something terrible. So much for the importance of presentation skills! Over the course of the day, we raised several others on Stones and Stimmys, and caught several dinks hoping for larger fish using #16 BWO's. In a sense, I guess the fish "schooled" us, though not in the way I'd hoped. Nonetheless, I did learn a few things: (1) eleven years old is NOT too young for a kid to learn how to row a drift boat. The problem now is that Sean was so good at it, I'll have to restrain myself from pulling him out of school more often! (2) You CAN learn something about flyfishing by osmosis, or at least plain observation. Ryan was nailing casts to all the right places, and getting fish up to his flies, despite having spent most of his earlier trips just watching. (3) River otters look a lot like our pet ferrets, and enjoy watching people float by. (4) the warm summer evenings full of #14 caddis appear to be over for the year. I'll miss 'em. One last lesson: as we floated past Umptanum, we stopped to cast to a couple of rising trout. A nice looking specimen rose to my #16 Elk Hair caddis, but I set the hook too late, and missed. 20 minutes waiting and several fruitless casts later, I realized that sometimes you don't get a second chance -- that you have take advantage of the moment, and if you don't, it's gone for good. Funny that a fish had to underscore that lesson, when I've got two great kids who I should've learned it from long ago.