June 27, 2015 Chinook Pass Highway
It is not always just about the fish. Left about 3:15 this morning to pick up Melinda and a friend from the Especially for Youth camp at University of Puget Sound in Tacoma. Caught the first morning light on Mt Rainier looking up the White River Valley. Picked up the girls and told them we'd be travelling my style - stopping along the way, including a try at picking up stream 125.
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| Sunrise on Mt Rainier |
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| Avalanche Lily trio |
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| Lupine, paintbrush, and more |
After a short hike to the pretty little Union Creek Falls, I spent about 20 minutes looking for a fish in this nice little stream. Dry-dropper was run through some really likely looking water, but no sign of even a small one. This left me to try my hand once again in the American River. Years ago I remember fishing a stretch of this river, beautiful water, with nary a rise. I was determined this time to change that.
I had scoped out some nice water near pull-outs in the early morning light on the way over. I came to one and headed down to the stream. Still with the Turk's Tarantula on top and a size 16 pheasant tail on bottom, something that works well on the Tieton. Three likely holes, sweet looking water, nothing but one very small fish (possibly fry) that flew downstream when I lifted up. I couldn't count that one. Upstream was a beautiful run, the flow split by a boulder, the water looks thigh deep water with a nice seam between the fast and the slow water. I laid out the fly on the edge of the fast water, dropped it in the slow water, drifted it down the main current. Nothing. There had to be a fish there. So I changed the top fly to a beaded stone to get it down and put on the thingamabobber. First cast right against the rock, seconds later this beautiful cutthroat was on and to hand. Probing the water above brought two more fish. Then it was fast water for quite a ways. It was time to go anyway. All it takes is one fish to make it number 125.
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| Beautiful American River cutthroat |
2 comments:
Great photos and great post. Congrats on #125! I think I packed 125 boxes today prepping for the Peru move. Okay, it was really just 28 boxes, but it seemed like more, especially because some of them were fishing gear. :-(
Fishing gear doesn't count as part of your luggage allowance, does it?
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