Picnic Point SRC's

With no steel to chase within a four hour driving radius, and a boat trailer in multiple pieces in the front yard, I have had no choice but to mow the lawn, pull weeds, and kill sticker bushes in the back yard to pass the time on the weekends. I needed something to cast a fly at.

As a kid my dad and I would go set the crab pots and then troll around the Hood Canal in front of Scenic Beach State Park hooking sea run cutthroats as we waited for the Dungeness crabs to trap themselves. I took for granted the fact that on more than one occasion we would go out and hook one or two 20+ inchers. Now 20 inch sea runs are few and far between.

Attention Anglers

There are many beach access points north of Seattle that are great for fly fishing, but one of the easiest to get to is Picnic Point Park in the Lynnwood area. Picnic Point is a small point with a little creek draining out into the sound. It offers easy access and is pretty open with plenty of room for fly fisherman to spread out without hooking each other on every back cast. Believe it ot not, it would also be a great place for a picnic!

I hit the beach about 8:00 a.m. With high tide reaching its peak about 8:45. This way I could fish with an incoming tide, high tide, and as the tide began its quick decent. This time of year offers some pretty good tide swings, and the big tide changes is what stirs up the SRC food. There were two other fly fisherman there when I arrived also waiting to fish these tide changes. Prime time for these SRC's is early morning about and hour after high tide. With a negative tide on the way today, the water really started moving.


Pincnic Point Park

There were some signs of chum fry flopping around the surface so I tried four different color streamers with no hook ups except for some sloppy kelp chunks. With my right foot now freezing cold because my high quality waders are not exactly waterproof anymore, I was just about to head home to lay on the couch for the rest of the day. But first, I decided to take off my sink tip and tie on an orange shrimpy looking streamer deal I tied the day before. Finally, along the seam where the creek flows in about 8 feet of water I had a sea lice covered cutty nab my homemade fly.

I made a few more casts, but with hypothermia in my right foot and more growling coming from my belly than any of the sea lions swimming around, I decided to head out. But this will not be the last time I hit Picnic Point Park. Sea run cutties in the Puget Sound is a fishery that is very overlooked. The Puget sound may be one of the best places anywhere to catch a cutthroat in the salt water on the fly.