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Angling Publications - Index

Angling Publications - april2008 - Index

JEFF EDVALDS PHOTO
scattered as the fish they pursue. I’ve chased sea-runs down the walls of Hood
Canal, drifted and cast from small boats around the islands of the south Sound,
experimented with them in Clayoquot Sound on Vancouver Island, and enjoyed
their convenience in downtown Pugetropolis, sometimes within sight of
Seattle skyscrapers. If there are crowds in this sport, they will be near the cities
in saltwater parks and points, such as Kayak, Picnic, Meadow, West, Alki and
Three Tree. Other top Puget Sound spots would have to include the edges of
Bainbridge Island, Camano Island, the east side of Whidbey Island, Skagit Bay,
Port Orchard, Manchester, Dabob Bay, Hoodsport, both sides of the Hood
Canal from top to bottom, Carr Inlet, Fox Island, Hale Pass, Wollochet, Budd
Inlet, Sinclair Inlet, Dyes Inlet, both sides of the Tacoma Narrows, and nearly
every piece of gravel beach south of Vashon Island.
It’s actually tougher to find a tapered beach without sea-runs and resident
salmon than it is to find one with fishable concentrations. Every fly shop in the
cities on the edge of Puget Sound is keyed into this fast-growing fishery and can
offer critical, where-when-how information, along with a handful of regionally
hot fly patterns. Some can recommend guides who specialize in chasing beachcombing
trout and salmon.
Using an hour or two of an afternoon to lean on the counter at Patrick’s, Puget
Sound Fly, Kitsap Sports, or Northwest Angler will cut years off the learning
curve and likely put you into fish from the first day out.
Two books I strongly recommend for any serious saltwater fly chaser are published
by Frank Amato Books (www.amatobooks.com) out of Portland. Fly Fishing
Coastal Cutthroat Trout by Les Johnson is an exhaustively comprehensive explanation
of the flies, tackle, techniques and tactics. Almost 50, full-color pages are devoted
to fly patterns and tying recipes. Johnson fell in love with sea-runs when other
fly anglers were singularly infatuated with cutthroat and steelhead trout in freshwater
and had abandoned the mysterious saltwater to bait dunkers and gear haulers.
The rest of us are just catching up to where Les Johnson has been all this time.
Another compelling reference is Steve Raymond’s 1996 release, The Estuary Fly
Fisher. While Johnson explores the full run of saltwater, Raymond concentrates
on river mouths, a feasting place for trout in spring and fall when the rivers
dribble their salmon and steelhead smolts into the open water. Tides, flies, tackle,
tactics, and seasonal keys are explained in great detail by Raymond.
The saltwater trout and salmon catch-and-release fishery is open year-round, and
most importantly, is productive year-round. Salmon are more closely regulated, so
before you decide to keep a fish for the smoker, check the current regulations.
The action, of course, comes with highs and lows—tied primarily to tides and
the seasonal appearances of salmon fry or baitfish—but there’s never a day when
there’s not a fish to be caught on a beach somewhere in the Northwest.
Standing in a small boat, balanced on flat water, with the whisper of wavelets
falling on a gravel beach, Mount Rainier glowing in the distance, and the
hack-sawed peaks of the Olympics chewing into the sky behind you, all the
time watching for a quiver of nervous water to throw a skinny streamer at—is
not a bad place to be.
Terry Sheely is Fly Fish America’s Pacific Regional Editor, and lives in Black
Diamond,Washington. E-mail Terry your comments at tsheely@reachone.com
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