Casade River Coho in October

Cascade River near Marblemount

In the summer time, many mornings the alarm is set for 3:45 a.m. so that you can be standing in the river for a 5:00 a.m. sunrise. One advantage to fall fishing is that sunrise isn’t until 7:45. So after burning up half the day and sleeping in until 5:00 a.m. last weekend we decided to head up to the Cascade River.

The Cascade River is a tributary of the mighty Skagit that dumps into the main river near Marblemount. This small river is home a decent return of hatchery Coho in the fall and a nice run of hatchery steelhead in the winter. This is a long haul for these fish and many of the fish caught this far up river will have some serious color to them. These fire engine red Coho may not make the best table fare, but they fight hard and are less lock jaw than many silvers around the local rivers.

The Cascade is very accessible river. Park at the hatchery and walk down the trail to see all the fish in the side stream that were able to make the long journey all the way back to the place where they were created. Cross a small side stream, and from here you can either go up or down river. Just like fishing at any hatchery in Washington State, this spot is no secret. You will not be alone.  The gravel bars are large enough that people can spread out, and there is some room to move around. Not a highly recommended fly fishing destination however.  Today we were fishing with a group, and being that not everyone in the group fly fishes, we decided to join the dark side and gear fish today. We could go off the tangent that gear fishing is not real fishing and that true fisherman only fish with bamboo and dry flies, but I will save that for another post.

We arrived to the hatchery about 7:30 a.m. and were fishing by 7:40. Second cast with my freshly cured to perfection humpy eggs, Katie reels in about a 6 pound red silver. The water was very low and clear, so short leaders and good bobber stops were the ticket to keep from losing gear. The fishing was not lights out, but it was fairly consistent. We spent the two hours or so fishing the same spot and by now there were enough people around that every decent hole had a few fisherman standing in it. I had gone all morning without hooking  a silver, but about half way through the morning I got surprised with a VERY late summer run hatchery steelhead. She had been in the river a while, but its always fun to be surprised with a fish you weren’t expecting. Due to the low and clear conditions, dark jigs and eggs worked well for us this day. Between the humpies and the silvers over the past few months, I have had my fill of salmon and am ready to commit to chasing winter steel. But overall, this was a very enjoyable trip out with friends.

 

Goodbye Summer, Hello Rain... and Fish...

 

Did you know that is rains in the Pacific Northwest? If you spent a day on a river in Washington in July or August you would probably think the answer is NO. If you were to hang around until the fall, you would learn the truth. The end of summer is often a big mystery in the Pacific Northwest, sometimes September is one of the nicest months of the year and some years, it rains…a lot. Once summer is gone, it is gone for good and the grey skies and dark clouds set up shop right over the top of Washington State for the next nine months.

This year being an odd year, we were graced with the presence of 6 million slimy humpies that dumped themselves into our Puget Sound rivers about mid August. At first, I was super pumped and couldn’t wait to target humpies and fill my smoker. Now, I can’t swing a fly down a river without hooking one of these things in the hump. It’s like reeling in a piece of drift wood sideways. I never thought I would be annoyed by catching a fish, but I’ve had enough Pink salmon action to keep me content for the next two years. So as September rolled around and as the month progressed, it was time to start thinking about the Pink salmon’s less slimy relative, the Coho.

As most people in the PNW are upset to see summer time come to an end, the river fisherman of our state are chomping at the bit waiting on the first big rain. This time of year there are often thousands of staging Coho in the Puget Sound waiting for their chance to shoot up the rivers where they will swim to their fire engine red transformation. This last week brought in some of these rains, so we decided to hit the river.

The week before Saturday September 28^th, the weatherman was calling for extreme rains that would blow out all the rivers in no time, flood warnings and all. Listening to the radio on our drive out to the Skykomish river Saturday morning, they were saying how this was a good weekend to stay at home and tie leaders. We figured we had a couple hour window first thing in the morning before the river turned to sludge.

Steelhead are almost always my first priority when hitting the river, so after we made a pass through one of the usual runs on the Skykomish, we decided to head down to the mouth of the Wallace river and see if there were any Silvers milling around. 99 times out of 100 there is already someone standing under the train trestle on the Wallace River. I think the cats and dogs falling out of the sky scared off all the regulars this morning, as we walked up through the woods to find no one. By now, the rain was coming down harder than Shaq in the 90’s breaking backboards.

I have a messed up obsession for chasing steelhead with my fly rod, so I continued to fish down towards the mouth looking for steelhead. If there is a chance that a hunk of steel may be nearby, I want to chase it, even if the odds were against me. Katie stayed up river near the trestle, and no more than 10 minutes later she had a silver on the sandy beach. I instantly became jealous and started winging my fly up into the hole where she just hooked the fish. To my surprise, all I hooked were humpies, no matter where I go there is a humpy to be reeled in tail first. The river was starting to change before our eyes and it was only a matter of time before it would achieve full blown out status. So we bonked the hatchery silver and took it home for the bbq.

That morning when we arrived to the river, the Skykomish was flowing about 1500 CFS, by evening the same day, it was flowing over 14,000 CFS (15,000 CFS is flood status). The next morning it was up to 18,000 CFS. These crazy rains are the rains that all of us river fisherman have been waiting for. Once all the houses and cars stop floating down the river, there will be nothing left but fish for the catching. Fall is here, and winter is right around the corner. For many of us this is our favorite time of the year. Happy fishing.