Back to the Bay

Life is a series of changes, and the last couple months have been a wild ride.  The wife and I packed up all of our belongings and now reside in a twenty five foot travel trailer with a few belongings locked far away in a storage unit.

We left Southwest Florida and pointed the wheel northwest.  The wife visited with her parents in Tennessee for a couple weeks while I drove to a place only a fisherman could love.  Neah Bay is a lovely place as long as you are on the water.  The gorgeous shoreline and offshore waters full of life have to be accessed through the hub of the Makah Nation.  The main reason the wife decided not to tag along was due to the fact that she saw enough of the depressing town during my final summer guiding there in 2005.  After spending a week there I can say that it has only gone downhill since 2005, especially after watching some of the local behavior at the only boat ramp in town.  Parking a pickup truck across the boat ramp and walking away does not attract tourism.  Neither does cursing and threatening someone who politely asks how long you are going to be blocking the ramp as you spool up a gill net.

For the first three days of fishing I was able to bum a boat ride with a couple strangers.  This was the first time I had ever met up with anglers from an internet fly fishing forum.  Luckily the meetup did not end with an interview with Chris Hansen. 

The first two days were spent inside the Strait and just offshore. The visibility was like putting your head in a grey plastic bag all day.  We fished all over the area north of Tatoosh Island but the only fish in the area were rockfish.  My hosts were thrilled with the action, but my thumb got shredded lipping fish and I couldn't help wonder where in the hell were the salmon?  This area is usually a slam dunk and with the large preseason forecast it was a bit concerning.

The third day we joined Tony (who I would be fishing with the rest of the week) to buddy boat out to Swiftsure Bank to find some fish.  Tony had been finding some decent fishing the previous couple days and after two days of just rockfish we had salmon on our minds.  After a long run in the fog we arrived on the bank and my first cast came tight to something heavy.  A few minutes later this nice chinook salmon was led into the waiting net.

For us that would be about all the fish we found that day.  We decided to leave a few fish to see if we could find the concentrations of salmon that just had to be offshore.  We found none.  Tony stayed put and found some scattered pods of salmon.  Someday I will learn the lesson to not leave fish to find fish.

I fished with Tony for another four days.  The fishing remained tough, but one day we found decent fishing.  The funniest part for me was that in the midst of really slow fishing, when we finally found some decent signs of salmon we both started fishing the least effective method, poppers.  I was able to catch one on a new pattern.  I tied a trailer hook version of the Zaggin Zook and it worked as well as my normal poppers (like the Kinky Banger).  Here's a video of the Zaggin Zook.

 

It was a great trip shared with great people.  Hopefully I will make my way back to the Northwest next summer and the fishing will be as good as it should be.  I hope the preseason forecasts end up being correct and the poor fishing was a result of the warmer, brown water we found offshore.

The Kinky Banger

I am not an innovative fly tyer by any means.  I steal ideas from great tying minds to fit what I am trying get a fly to look like.  I wrote a bit about this here.

The past couple years I have been trying to fix the one thing I dislike about the majority of poppers / sliders used for salmon in the Pacific Northwest.  These patterns work exceptionally well and myself and others have caught loads of salmon on this style of stinger hooked surface pattern.  The problem I have is that I just don't like the aesthetic of these phallically shaped flies.

I have been looking for a way to tie salmon popper patterns with a more realistic taper from head to  tail.  I was wasting time on the computer the other day and found a step-by-step guide for Jonny King's Kinky Muddler.  The way the body was constructed I knew that I had found an idea to fix a problem only I have.

I used a Dremel to create some space on the backside of the foam cylinder to allow a smooth transition from popper head to the SF Blend body and I think this will be a success when it comes to Neah Bay coho this August.

I present the Kinky Banger.

The One

I've been busy tying clousers getting ready for a visit to Neah Bay in August.  I needed another white bucktail after picking the one on my bench clean.  I reached into the bin of hair and pulled out one of the finest bucktails I have had the pleasure to work with.  Crinkly, long, and amazingly soft.

I returned to the vise and started tying.  I grabbed the new bucktail with scissors in hand and hesitated.  I looked at this bucktail and wondered if it was too nice to use for clousers.  Should I save it for something more deserving?  Maybe something larger than #2 clousers?  It seemed like a waste not to take advantage of its full length.

When I couldn't actually come up with an actual pattern I would tie with it I squeezed the scissors and cut the first pencil sized clump of hair off.

I believe clousers are good enough.

Even Less Of An Excuse....

To bucktail this summer.

Huge Columbia River Coho Run

Almost a million fish forecast to return to just the Columbia River.  These runs are the main driver for the Neah Bay coho fly fishery, and these numbers should offer amazing numbers of fish not only offshore but right at the entrance.

"Coho Are Just Ugly This Year"

With the start of the saltwater salmon season setting process (North of Falcon) beginning over the next month we are starting to learn what the preseason forecasts will be.  The Columbia River coho forecast has just been released.

Columbia River Coho Forecast Not Encouraging

My saltwater season goals usually begin with thinking about at least a trip or two out to Neah Bay.  This forecast does not make me optimistic for this summer out at the NW tip of the Olympic Peninsula.  It seems like a Columbia coho return over 500K is a guarantee of incredible fishing and below that results in spotty fishing, especially closer to the entrance and just inside the Strait.

I will not let this keep me from my plans to fish out there this summer, but it will minimize the number of trips out there.  Hopefully, the Puget Sound forecasts will make me smile about the fishing closer to home.

Fingers crossed for that Puget Sound forecast. 

Why I C&R

I can only imagine the shape the rod and reel are in now.  Thirteen years being dragged along the jagged, rocky bottom of the Pacific Ocean by the daily currents can not be good to metal and graphite.

We've all dropped fishing gear into the water.  Most of the time it is not a big deal.  I've lost an uncountable number of flies over the years due to clumsy hands.  Last winter I came within a second of seeing my entire supply of sink tips vanish after fumbling my shooting head wallet into a glacial river as I changed tips.  The worst for me was losing an entire rod and reel overboard.

I was fishing right where the Strait of Juan de Fuca and the Pacific Ocean meet.  There are some shallow rocky spots north of Tatoosh Island that can be fantastic places to catch rockfish on the fly at the right tide.  The fish were finning all over the surface and the fishing was great.  I unhooked a rockfish and left the fly dangling in the water right next to the boat and the rod leaned on the gunwale.  As I was putting the rockfish in the cooler I heard a dragging noise.  The noise was the fly reel moving along the deck.  A rockfish had grabbed the fly sitting inches below the surface next to the boat and turned towards the bottom.  I started towards the rod being pulled towards the edge of the boat.  I felt like I was moving in slow motion as I swung around the console and saw the rod go over the edge.  It felt like it happened in slow motion but I know the time between the fish grabbing the fly and the rod being swallowed by the ocean was just a matter of seconds.

I look back and realize that the lesson of that day is that harvesting rockfish results in a severe financial consequence.  One more reason that catch and release can be a good thing.

In Defense of Saltwater Fly Fishing

Recently I have spent a good amount of time casting flies along our coastal salmon migration highways.  I have not always seen success but have found good fishing and have just started to scratch the surface in learning about some new places.  Learning these areas when you're dealing with tides, currents, and migratory fish takes time.  This is where it gets interesting.  Does the learning curve increase or decrease by using non-fly fishing techniques?

The technique most often used to search for salmon among "fly fishermen"is called bucktailing.  Bucktailing is trolling a fly behind a moving boat.  If you weren't familiar with this area you might wonder why a trolling technique gets so much attention and press in the Pacific Northwest fly fishing community and press.

When discussing bucktailing it comes down to one simple question.  What defines fly fishing to you?  For me fly fishing is first and foremost about the cast.  Whether the cast is aerialized or cast using water borne anchors we use the weight of the fly line and not the fly to deliver our flies to waiting fish.  We can argue for days about the definition of flies with all of the new synthetics and weights we use to construct flies these days but without fly casting we're not having any of those arguments.

Does bucktailing help someone learn how to become a better saltwater salmon fly fisherman?  Does bucktailing help a fly fisherman learn the water types salmon prefer?  My belief is that is answer to both questions is no.  No amount of trolling a fly around is going to help you become more proficient in casting or learning which retreives work.

Like most fly fishermen in the Pacific Northwest I had always heard that bucktailing was the way to fly fish the Pacific Ocean and Strait of Juan de Fuca.  It is how I started fishing for salmon at Neah Bay.  I quickly found out that I not only did not enjoy trolling flies but I wanted to actually fly fish for salmon.  I stopped trolling flies and my education truly began.  I slowly started to learn how to read the water and slowly started to have success.  As I gained knowledge of the fishery the good days started to outnumber the poor fishing days.  Not only did I not bucktail personally but I was able to successfully guide fly anglers for years with zero bucktailing.

What I find interesting in the fly fishing communities acceptance of bucktailing is the lack of acceptance of other methods that are far closer to fly fishing than bucktailing.  Bring up fishing beads for steelhead on any Northwest fishing forum and watch the sparks fly even though fishing beads is closer to fly fishing than motoring a boat with a fly dangling in the prop wash.

The only thing bucktailing shares with bead fishing is an attempt to speed up the learning curve.  Unfortunately it doesn't teach you how to fly fish and the only thing it helps with is hooking a few fish on a fly rod.  Of course, what is the point of using a fly rod if you are not going to fly fish?

Back to the Bay

Decided to take the kayak out to Neah Bay yesterday.  i was hoping to catch some pinks in close to shore but decided not to take any chances on heading out too far with the strong outgoing current.  As I was heading back to the start of the drift I noticed some rockfish busting bait on the surface.  I should have rigged up the popper, but I was lazy and stuck with the sinking line.

Can't beat the saltwater when there is no wind or swell.

Summer Fun

Got to spend a few wonderful days on the coast fishing over the past couple weeks.  Mostly trolling for chinooks but got to spend a little time casting flies for silvers.

It has been six long years since I've been into a nice coho bite and I couldn't believe how excited I became.  It was one of the highlights of fishing since returning to the Olympic Peninsula about a year and a half ago.

The year in review....

2010 was a great year. 

The year started with a big move back to Washington State.  The job situation didn't work out as expected, but being able to deal with unexpected issues and make changes is just part of life. 

Summer was a blast.  Lots of hiking and exploring.  Checked out two fisheries I had always wanted to fish when I lived here previously.  The true lesson is do not put off taking advantage of opportunities, and I know that I will strap on the pack and hit both of those fisheries again next summer.  One highlight of the summer was one of the most visual skating dry fly takes I have ever seen.  I can still picture the fly skating two feet in front of the exposed boulder and the fish coming up and exploding on the fly.

Summer also brought a couple trips back to the great big blue, the Pacific Ocean off of Neah Bay.  This past summer wasn't the best year for salmon off the coast, but a good time was had and a few fish were caught.  Next year I hope the silver runs increase and I can get out there and chase some on the cast fly.

This past year also marked my first serious attempt at gardening.  There were successes and failures, but it is amazing how much quality food one can grow in a small residential lot.  We were frankly getting a little tired of green beans, potatoes, and summer squash.  Hopefully, this upcoming summer gives us a normal June and September weather wise.

I'm looking forward to 2011.  I have a couple more trips to places I have always wanted to fish, along with more exploring of places I started learning last spring and summer. 

Also for 2011, I hope we can all make time to send letters and attend meetings to speak for wild fish.  I know I struggle to find the time, as it's easier to focus on fishing and life and ignore the fight that often seems as useful as pounding your head against the wall but wild fish are still just hanging on.  It reminds me of one of my best days this past summer.  I hooked four and landed two beautiful wild steelhead in about an hour and a half of fishing time.  Going by fishing results, I was fishing over a huge run of steelhead.  But this river now has a run of wild summer runs that might be 100 fish.  I'll remind myself of that every time I hear people talk about great fishing.  The trend is still going down, no matter how hard so many seem to be working at catching the last one.

Happy New Year!

Today is It!!!

Today is the final day to send in comments to the WDFW Commissions regarding 2010-2012 Sportfishing Rule changes. There's some important conservation proposals that need public comment, along with some strange ones like setting aside the best small-boat bottomfishing in the state for the dive community.

Here's a link to the proposals

http://wdfw.wa.gov/fish/regs/rule_proposals/

Send in your e-mails on this final day... this was my final paragraph

"Washington State has seen dramatic declines in all of the fish stocks. To act as though there are fish populations immune to overfishing and decline is just putting your head in the sand. The best time to act for the future is to protect populations when they are abundant and not wait until action is beyond necessary. This goes not only for rockfish, but all other fish populations in the Northwest. The time to pretend that the past management that put our fish stocks on the brink will continue to work on the few remaining stocks deemed healthy is over. In 50 year, will the pictures of wheelbarrows full of rockfish from 2009 be perceived the same way as pictures of stringers of 100 trout from a century ago? You stand on the brink with the power to lead our fisheries into the next century with the knowledge that comes from watching management failures and using updated science. You can march into the future, or be dragged backwards by the institutional inertia of failed policies. It’s your choice, but we are watching and future citizens will judge you on what you do now."