Fish Creek

Someone was not pleased she missed out on the action in Corvallis and therefore insisted that we go camping and fishing somewhere locally. There are many options, but we decided to go to what Max used to say was one of his favorite creeks. I also knew this drainage would be lower than most local streams at the moment and clear. Fish Creek is often overlooked for other more popular regional fly fishing water. However, we learned that things have changed recently with the elimination of the bait option. This is welcome news, as I've felt the fishing on this stream needed attention. Although, noting all of the Washington plates, one might believe it is a blue ribbon stream. It's not a far drive on the interstate to Spokane and is pretty well known. There are also many folks floating the gorge at the moment as well which is near where Fish Ck. empties into the main drainage.

The labs welcomed a little time away too. Our older lab is showing her age and as most dog owners know, this is a frustrating period, watching a best friend decline.

Smores. Got that done too. The kit came in a paint like can with all three of the main works, chocolate, gram cracker and yep, marshmallows. Just had to keep the pooches out of it! Easier said than done.

It was a full moon and cool in the evening. Only one incident of barking dogs at two in the morning. It's awkward trying to sleep in. The brain remains in alarm mode anyway, and soon the coffee was on followed by pancakes on a stick.

The woods rose is in bloom along with numerous other flowers. My nose is still running. This year the pollen seems more abundant than usual around here. After giving it a whirl for a while in the morning and early afternoon, we gave up on the top water action. We could not determine any one specific hatch. We witnessed no rises and tried all of our usual tricks. So, after I found the below fellow, we went deep.

I had no stone fly nymphs in the vest. Crazy. One other thing that I noticed that was odd was that there were no salmonfly shucks along the bank vegetation. This hatch had to of already gone off here, but there was no evidence of it if it had. Some friends said they did pretty well on Rock Creek this year while we were racing.

Teaching a child to nymph fish. Can one think of anything that has such potential to test one's patience? We had a nifty little breeze to boot. Flip, drift. Flip, drift. Flip, drift. Watch the indicator. "That was a strike?" "When?" "Why is the lead wrapped around the fly?" "How do you tie that on? I'll never figure that out." "Keep the line tight while it drifts." And so it went... The largest nymph pattern I had was a bead head prince. It worked and we caught two cut throat trout. The experience though had been priceless. After all, there were no hooked fishermen and that's always a good day. We're looking forward the the next one.