Spent a Saturday with Mel lining out hikes for Girls Camp next month, which gave me the excuse to hike up Indian Creek as this is one of the hikes we will be doing. It just happens that this creek is closed to fishing up to the falls, which was the destination for the hike. It was a nice trail, a little rocky, one steep stretch climbing out of the canyon to get above the falls, and a nice little waterfall.
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| Indian Creek Falls |
Having found the falls, we continued upstream a little ways and found a small brook trout in stream #100, unofficially ending the quest for 100 (the list of streams still must be validated by the impartial jury of Tom). It was a pretty little stream, but only found a couple fish, so we didn't stay long.
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| Indian Creek Brook Trout - Steam #100! |
Later in the day, we drove up the South Fork of the Tieton, a nice-sized stream that was just out of the way enough to have not been visited yet (the first 12 miles of stream or so are closed to protect bull trout I believe - the state record of about 22.5 lbs was caught in this stream in 1961, but it has been closed to fishing for a long time). We stopped at the South Fork Falls, a nice falls a short hike down from the road.
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| South Fork Tieton Falls |
A little further upstream, the river opens at the crossing of a Forest Service road. Fishing right at the bridge, I landed five colorful cutthroats and missed quite a few more, mostly on an orange stimulator chew toy. It was a decent sized stream, and you could watch the fish come up from the deeper water to attack the fly. Fished the one hole for about 15 minutes, then back in the car to head home. This one would definitely be a fun one to return to and explore some more.
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| South Fork Tieton Cutthroat |
As the sunset was approaching, we stopped at the Tieton River at a favorite place alongside the highway. Mel had a chance to practice casting and mending and found a small rainbow. Great end to a great day!
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| Tieton Rainbow |
