Klickitat River in August

Friday night after a long torturous day of work at our “real” jobs, we decided to brave the wind, dust, forest fires, and lightning and make a b-line for Leidl Campground on the Klickitat River. The Leidl campground is located about 23 miles outside of Goldendale about three miles up from the Stinson Flats campground right on the Klickitat River.


Klickitat River

The Klickitat River is a glacier fed river, and is one of Washington’s longest free flowing rivers. Not a huge river, it runs cold and can be temperamental with weather changes. Hot days create glacial runoff, and a little rain up in the hills will create some color in the river as well. Don’t let the color fool you, even with a little tinge, the river is still very fishable. Though the river lost visibility pretty quickly, the bipolar Klickitat seemed to regain visibility in the afternoons and evenings, making this the better time to fish.

Talking with some of the locals, steelhead fishing has been a bit slower lately than past years, but the fish are still there. As tree hugging fly fisherman, we’ve already handicapped ourselves to the bait fishing, plug pulling, meat slingers of the Pacific Northwest, so when fishing was tough on the Klickitat over the weekend, we were doomed. The trout bites were plentiful, and if rainbow trout were the name of the game we would’ve been balling. Trout fishing is a ton of fun, but we were there to slang chrome. Unfortunately, there was little chrome to slang. We swung flies, skated dries, and even tried dropper beads with scent, still no metal lovin’. We only heard of one fish caught up above Liedl. So this became a reconnaissance trip to scope out some buckets to fling our flies into on future trips.

The Klickitat is a very accessible river to the boatless wandering on foot fisherman. The river was running low over the weekend at about 780 CFS, and was very wadable up near the Leidl Campground. Stinson flats also offer some very nice water that is easily approachable via felt soles. Watch out for snakes though.  August makes for some hot days on the river, and has made for some great summer run steelhead action, but perhaps this is a trip better designed for the fall.

Sunday, we traveled down river to the town of Klickitat. There was more fishing activity on this portion of the lower river. Visibility was better and the river was even more accessible with the highway running along the river for many miles. Klickitat offers a couple general stores and no shortage of cabins for fisherman. If it is attractive people with spikey hair, popped collars, and martinis you are looking for, stay far away from the town of Klickitat. You will not find those things here. But if it’s a beautiful easily accessible steelhead river that you are looking for, then the Klickitat is perfect place (all you need is a Discover pass to camp at Leidl and Stinson Flat).