Yakima River in Eastern WA near Ellensburg
Yakima River report: (June 20)
I met up with Aron, my guide from the Worley Bugger Fly Co. fly shop, in Cle Elum. We put in at the Bristol and took out at the Green Bridge. It was a great day. Mostly cloudy in the morning with the sun peaking out every now and then to warm things up a bit. Then the clouds mostly went away and it was sunny for the rest of the day, but with no wind at all until the last half mile of the drift. Almost perfect, a few more clouds in the afternoon would have been nice for more BWO hatches but that was ok. Speaking a hatches, there were a lot of bugs out and about. Not a huge amount of any one kind but a lot. We had many Little Yellow Sally stoneflies plus, BWO's, PMD's, Drakes, Spinners, midges, and a few Summer Stoneflies and a grasshopper. Kind of a smorgasbord of bugs, and the trout were very interested.
I rigged up two dry fly rods and never even bothered to rig up a nymphing rod. It was a dry fly kind of fishing all day long. I had solid hook ups on 25 fish, to the boat. Many of them were smaller Rainbows or Cutthroats, which is always a good sign for the future. But I had a few 14 and 15 inch trout as well. The trout were all very eager to go for the flies, with many misses just because the trout would miss the fly when they tried to grab it. Even with the PMD's and BWO's coming off like they were, the fly that got the most attention from the fish was a large Chernobyl with a peacock colored body. Hence the many misses, the trout wanted the fly but many grabbed at it all wrong, or they were too small, so no hook up. That was alright with me, it kept me on my toes and kept my reaction time good. The other rod had either a size 16 Purple Haze Parachute or a size 18 olive colored body parachute. They both caught fish but I kept going back to the large hopper which seemed to get the most attention.
Yep, it was a good day on the Yakima River. Now on to Montana for a couple days on the Clark Fork River.
Larry ---sagefisher---
