It is early for them to return and we didn’t really expect much but a few cutthroat came to play. We hooked a half dozen or so and landed a few. Most of the fish caught went as follows.
The hookup…
The fight…
The release…
Early morning on the Skagit is, to me, the best way to start the day. Catching a few fish is almost secondary. It was a bit chilly and we were finally driven off the river by a brisk wind. It seemed a bit odd to us to be bundled up, catching fish that usually show up in September on the 1st day of August but not much complaining could be heard.
Very nice! Sea run Cutts…not much better than that. They’re my favorite fish to eat as well;^)
Nice fish! can you tell me do these cut’s actualy move out to sea and spend time out wide before running back up the rivers to spawn like a steelhead, or do they move in and out of the estuary area on a fairly regular basis?
All the best.
Mike
Mike,
That is a real good question. Of all the anadromous fish in the northwest the searun cutthroat trout is the least known and least studied. They have no commercial value so no one real cared about them. From what little I have learned they can and will move in and out of the estuary freely. Sometime venturing miles from their river system but they will stay within that few miles of the system and do not migrate out to sea like a salmon or steelhead will. There is evidence that they will travel from river system to river system but I think this behaviour is limited to a few adventerous fish.
There are always searuns in the river system with fish moving in and out thru out the year but the biggest push of fish will be in the late summer/early fall when they come up the system in preperation for an early spring spawn. Most fish will winter in the river close to their spawning creeks. Early spring they will move into the small feeder creeks of the system for the spawn. They are a good indicator species for the health of a system and its smaller tributaries.
Another good time to fish for them is in the spring on the lower river after they spawn when they are out migrating. If one can time it right there is a hatch of what we call alder flies in the spring and we toss small dark dries to rising cutts which can be and actually is some of the best dry fly action one can find anywhere in the world. The problem is the timing and the fact that it is such a short time frame.
Searun cutthroat trout are one of my favorite fish. They are aggresive and come to fly with purpose making them one of the most fly fisherman friendly fish I know of.
Thanks Kerry, that is very interesting. One more Question if you don’t mind, Do the see run cuts get bigger than the river resident fish, and is the colour different? sea run browns down here are generaly bigger and at least when they first enter the rivers are Silver with almost no spots and easy to tell from river resident fish.
All the best.
Mike
I would think the fish that go to the salt will be slightly larger than the ones that choose to stay resident mainly because there is more abundant food in the salt. One thing that has been noted about searun cutthroat trout is some will stay in the river for an extended period of time and then decide to head out to the saltwater. On the other side of the coin fish that had been migrating regularly will decide to stay in the river as if resident. From what I can tell no one really know why for sure but speculation would be some kind of built in species survival technique. There will always be a number of resident fish that may or may not turn anadromous and some that will turn into resident after migrating. This way if one side of the population, resident or anadromous, were to suffer some sort of die off there will be fish to rebuild the population. Same can be said for steelhead also.
Kerry,
Just back from 8 days on the Wynoochee River. I was in ceremony and didn’t have time to fish (had the gear, just not the time). I did watch a few fishermen flail the water to a froth and come up empty. If there were steelhead or Sea Run Cutts about, I didn’t see any taken.
REE