In pursuit of the little guys

Having finished the Yakima float with the brothers by 10 am, I was left with a decision - head straight home, or head home by way of a small mountain stream. Yup, you guessed which route I chose. In the realm of some of our "on-the-way-to" trips, this was just a mild detour that only doubled the 90 minute drive home, but a detour well worth the time for the solitude of a small mountain stream and the beauty of westslope cutthroat trout. For me, big trout are fun, but there's something about small streams with their small fish that holds a special place in my heart.

Monkeyflower along one of the few flat stretches of this little mountain stream

I'd visited this stream before, finding reasonable numbers of small cutts, so I figured I'd try a couple different sections to see what I could find. Same as my last visit, I found beautiful cutthroats eager to take a dry as it floated by. The size ranged from a few inches up to about 8 inches. It's so fun to watch them rise to the fly in the crystal clear water.

A very good sized cutthroat for this little stream

Same as my last visit, I didn't find large numbers of fish, which seems to be limited by the lack of pools or substantial riffles in this fast falling stream. When I finally climbed out, the view upstream was white water as far as I could see, which it had been for much of the stretch I had fished. But when you found a nice little pool, you would almost always find a fish or two. You can't complain about an afternoon like that!