Black Friday Deep Freeze

For the traditional post-Thanksgiving fishing trip, Tom came down to the Tri-Cities so Rick and Tom could try and find steelhead in the Touchet River. The weather didn't look too bad, about 25°F and foggy when we left before dawn Friday. Sure, it will ice up the guides, but we can live with that. We were heading to explore a section of the lower Touchet, which steelhead are reported to move into before heading upstream later in the season. As we headed east, the temperature started dropping, and as we pulled into the parking area next to the river, it was 15°F with dense ice fog.  Hmm, never tried fishing when it was this cold. Shelf ice lined both sides of the small stream, and after a few casts, not only was there ice in the guides, but the leader and line had a sheath of ice, and would cast like a stiff wire. Reeling in line was next to impossible as the ice from the line would jam up the first guide. Admitting defeat by the elements, we headed back to the car, and after the couple minutes it took to get there, our reels were frozen solid and unable to turn to bring in the excess line, punctuating our defeat with an exclamation point.

 

Not wanting to accept defeat, we checked the weather conditions with the smartphone. Waitsburg to the east was currently 21°F, forecast to get into the low 40's. Dayton, a little farther east (and closer to the mountains) was 24°F. Nice inversion. We could see the fog dissipated to the east, with the promise of sun to warm things up. So off we went. At our first stop east of Waitsburg, we found sun, a balmy 25°F, a couple really nice steelhead runs, but no fish.  Not surprising, as the steelhead usually don't make it up this far until later in the season. Tom turned one nice sized trout, but nothing else, surprising as normally you can catch a lot of small trout (smolt) in this section. The cold made some interesting ice in places, but it was nothing like the cold at the first stop.

 

Ice sculpture on the Touchet

By now it was nearing lunchtime, and we decided to try a favorite section near Dayton, after the obligatory stop for burgers and shakes at Ray's Drive In (Cougar burger - double 1/4 pound patties, slice of ham, bacon, and all the fixings - along the their awesome milkshake. Great!). Recharged, we headed to the stream with the temperature now a balmy 40 degrees or so, and promptly found lots of steelhead, just ones that hadn't headed out to sea yet (or that had decided to stay in the stream rather than make the long trip). They pretty much ignored flies (even the psycho prince), but couldn't resist the peachy pearl bead. It was still a little hit and miss, with some great looking water delivering no fish, while shallow riffles near the bank would crank out fish after fish. We found quite a few decent sized fish like the one pictured with Tom below.

Tom and a nice Touchet trout

It would have been nice to have found a steelie or two, but we did find some nice water that I might try and revisit later in the year. A great day fishing. Thanks, Elisabeth, for loaning Tom out for the day!