Work is highly overrated, so when Tom said he was wife and kid free we quickly planned an outing. Tom wanted to float the Kettle, but decided the water level might be too low for the driftboat by this time of year, and we opted for the old standbys, Nunya and Little Nunya, along with exploring a little more water on Little Nunya.
Tom got a late start, having to return home to retrieve his rattlesnake chaps. Good thing, because we ran into three this trip, only one of which we could see. But they were all nice and did let us know with sufficient warning that they weren't happy with the direction we were headed. We got this one to come out onto the trail (Tom wanted a new set of rattles for Tory, but the rock missed). Afterwards, we decided that next time we'll give one of our rattlesnake chaps a real, live, performance test (after taking it off our leg, off course).
The day started nicely, with this beatiful 20" brown about three holes up from the bridge on a black, bead-head bugger. Tom got several small ones on the hopper, but things were a little slow, even when we made it up into the better water. A little above the honey hole, we looked upriver and there were three fisherman in the water. They were either dropped off below, or were fishing their way down. Based on our seeing very few fish of size, and not many fish in the normal places, we may have been fishing behind them a good part of the day. Still, it was a bad day as we had some action throughout the stream and turned some nice fish besides those we caught.
Who can't love that face?
Tom pulled this fat-shouldered rainbow from under the grass bank (several times, in fact, as it kept running under and tangling in the grass.
This face is a little harder to love
My highlight of the day was the second big brown I caught (18") from another grassy bank. Tom had stung a nice brown about halfway down the bank and had worked all but the very upstream end of the undercut. I took my turn, trying to replicate Tom's graceful casting. He seems to place the hopper perfectly in the grass every second or third cast, while for me it is more like every tenth cast. Well, it must have been my tenth cast, because the line laid out perfectly while the flopper-hopper gently curled to the right and landed at the edge of the bank just upstream of the overhanging grass. "Perfect cast," I thought, "Just like one Tom would make." Tom, who was tying on a fly behind me, thought the same thing. The hopper drifted into the grass and was lost to view in the shadows, which didn't really matter for what happened next. The water under the grass erupted in spray with an accompanying sound like that of an our slicing through the water. You don't need to see the fly to know what to do when that happens! Rod up, fish on! Extremely gratifying to have such a perfect cast rewarded with a nice fish. Fish with Tom enough, and you can pick up some good habits.
Next stop, North Fork Tieton above Clear Lake. A washed out bridge left us miles short of the trailhead we went to investigate, so I went straight to the river that had skunked me years ago. Beautiful looking stream, a little colored from the glacier that feeds it, but same results as my last visit - not a sign of any fish. I couldn't see any bugs on the rocks in the stream, so I'll just claim this as a fairly sterile piece of water and cross it off my list of places to visit. Unless I'm in the area with Tom, who can then show me how the catching is done.
But this isn't a blog for sissy wildflowers. On the way home I thought I'd give Oak Creek another shot. Years ago I stopped very briefly and found it very small and overgrown and didn't raise any fish in a very brief attempt. While the girls slept, I took a little detour (really Natalie, it was little - only about 10 minutes out of the way) and found a wide open stream. A few years ago a fire burned the whole canyon, so it is completely opened up. Stopped two miles up, fished about 20 to 30 min, at least a couple dozen to the fly, a dozen or more to the hand. All quite small rainbows (3" to 7"). Most on a Goddard Caddis, some on the size 16 Psycho Prince. A smaller hairwing caddis probably would have caught more - there were a lot of rejections right at the fly.
A couple more miles upriver might find some larger fish. If the lower stretch tends to dry up small, the upper reaches in the forest (rather than oak scrub) might be more hospitable for trout year round. But most importantly, never caught fish here before, so this adds one more stream to my total on the way to 100 streams in Washington.