Very good call. I busted mine about 10 casts in on a trip to Madison River in October. I had geared the entire trip thinking about streamers, so that was a tough first day (but it did increase beer throughput).
Puget Sound
- Thread starter Stonedfish
- Start date
I like your optimism!
We had a El Nino, which wasn't super strong unlike the blob of 2015. We are predicted to be transitioning back to La Nina later this year. Hopefully the good ocean conditions we had the past few years prior to the current El Nino will help this years returns. I guess we'll see shortly.
SF
Let’s hope so. It be nice to have a summer without fire smoke from BC or Eastern Wa.
As one that dislikes hot weather, I’m all for the cooler, wetter weather La Nina brings along with cooler ocean conditions for or fish. Viva La Niña.
SF
I’ve got two 6wt in the classifieds
Anyone catching any salty rainbows lately? My buddy is a local guide and his client got this 12" rainbow in Case Inlet when fishing for SRCs. 2 pics, but same fish. Definitely a rainbow/steelhead.
I gotta think this is a fish the same age as last year's out-migrating smolts that just stuck around? Or maybe this year's class that decided to out-migrate early? Maybe there are rainbow/steelhead doing the same thing as SRCs and staying in the sound?
I would love to hear @Smalma opinion on this.
I gotta think this is a fish the same age as last year's out-migrating smolts that just stuck around? Or maybe this year's class that decided to out-migrate early? Maybe there are rainbow/steelhead doing the same thing as SRCs and staying in the sound?
I would love to hear @Smalma opinion on this.
skyriver -
It likely is a maiden cutthroat (spawn next year -maybe a female). Cutthroat smolts typically have that coloration and some of the older maiden fish as well. On those questionable fish a quick test is to slid your "pinky" to the back of the tongue of the fish. If you feel teeth (hyoid teeth) it is a cutthroat. If the "pinky" bleed be gentler!
Curt
It likely is a maiden cutthroat (spawn next year -maybe a female). Cutthroat smolts typically have that coloration and some of the older maiden fish as well. On those questionable fish a quick test is to slid your "pinky" to the back of the tongue of the fish. If you feel teeth (hyoid teeth) it is a cutthroat. If the "pinky" bleed be gentler!
Curt
Checked out some new beaches today.
Slow, cold morning which turned into a nice, too bright day for fishing.
A couple of beach finds to add to my collection.
SF
Slow, cold morning which turned into a nice, too bright day for fishing.
A couple of beach finds to add to my collection.
SF
Bambooflyguy
Life of the Party
Nice agate! Agates or a nice piece of driftwood for carved fish mounts are keepers for me…..
Thanks Curt. And what if no teeth on the tongue?
I will defer to your expertise, but when trapping fish I was told to count all fish with jaws that extended to but not well past the jaw as juvenile Steelhead/rainbows. I've read that there once were Steelhead with life histories similar to cutthroat in this region as well. I could be wrong, but this looks mighty like the juvenile steelhead I would clip/sample
Kashf -
Looking at the jaw length in relation to the posterior eye sockeye is the "standard" for separating rainbows from cutthroat. That said when sampling parr and/or smolts (on north sound rivers) the use of that criteria when compared to genetic testing the number of miss ID fish was embarrassing. While the "tooth" was also not a 100% it seemed to perform better (at least for me). And of course, there is always the question of hybrids.
I do know that the vast majority of the questionable rainbow/cutthroat that I have looked at passed the tooth test as cutthroat.
You are correct that in some areas there are steelhead that have life histories similar to our PS sea-run cutthroat. The best example our the
half pounders of Southern Oregon and North California. There the steelhead don't make those long migrations to the northern Pacific like our steelhead but rather generally go to the "Humbolt upwelling" of the coast, a much shorter migration. Those half pounders return to the rivers much like our cutthroat as immature fish.
Over the last 40+ years I have seen exactly 3 fish that I thought were half pounders, rainbows caught in the tidal section of the Skagit whose scales showed a summer of ocean growth (migrating as 2-year smolts and returning the same fall as 15-inch fish). That is out of a reasonable large sampling of sea-run cutthroat. Those fish as well those lower river rainbows that might be confused with cutthroat were typically heavier fish for their length than the typical sea-run. The lanky condition of the fish in question above is my first "tell" that it might be a cutthroat. But as you know without the fish in hand (and even sometimes then) the ID is best "guess".
Curt
Looking at the jaw length in relation to the posterior eye sockeye is the "standard" for separating rainbows from cutthroat. That said when sampling parr and/or smolts (on north sound rivers) the use of that criteria when compared to genetic testing the number of miss ID fish was embarrassing. While the "tooth" was also not a 100% it seemed to perform better (at least for me). And of course, there is always the question of hybrids.
I do know that the vast majority of the questionable rainbow/cutthroat that I have looked at passed the tooth test as cutthroat.
You are correct that in some areas there are steelhead that have life histories similar to our PS sea-run cutthroat. The best example our the
half pounders of Southern Oregon and North California. There the steelhead don't make those long migrations to the northern Pacific like our steelhead but rather generally go to the "Humbolt upwelling" of the coast, a much shorter migration. Those half pounders return to the rivers much like our cutthroat as immature fish.
Over the last 40+ years I have seen exactly 3 fish that I thought were half pounders, rainbows caught in the tidal section of the Skagit whose scales showed a summer of ocean growth (migrating as 2-year smolts and returning the same fall as 15-inch fish). That is out of a reasonable large sampling of sea-run cutthroat. Those fish as well those lower river rainbows that might be confused with cutthroat were typically heavier fish for their length than the typical sea-run. The lanky condition of the fish in question above is my first "tell" that it might be a cutthroat. But as you know without the fish in hand (and even sometimes then) the ID is best "guess".
Curt
These images aren't as clear as yours but I caught these two rainbows in California's Smith River tidewater while chasing SRC's in July a few years ago. I knew they were RBT's because both were hatchery fish with clipped adipose. At the time, it had me wondering if they were residing in the estuary (like many coastal cutts do along the Oregon coast) or had made a short ocean foray. I thought it was a little odd that they were around in July - early for a typical halfpounder.
Hit the canal from 7:30 till 1:00 today. Got rained on, but enjoyed the cloud cover. Seemed colder than it actually was.
The first 45 minutes were excellent with a number of fish to hand, then the action slowly faded. Best fly was a two tone peach worm. When that stopped getting bit, I went to the small game which I’m not a fan of but it picked up fish sporadically the rest of the day. Couldn’t get a sniff on olive worms today which had been working well.
One fish I caught looked post spawn to me.
SF
The first 45 minutes were excellent with a number of fish to hand, then the action slowly faded. Best fly was a two tone peach worm. When that stopped getting bit, I went to the small game which I’m not a fan of but it picked up fish sporadically the rest of the day. Couldn’t get a sniff on olive worms today which had been working well.
One fish I caught looked post spawn to me.
SF
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Interesting day on the canal. Started at 7:30 and called it a day at 10:30, but only fished for an hour or so.
Caught a couple small fish and lost one nice fish. Lots of fish showing so decided to switch up to the floater and small fly stuff.
In the 10 minutes it took me to change up my line and leader, the water went from crystal clear to brown colored. The fish quit rising as well. There wasn’t enough rain yesterday to blow any creeks out. It kind of looks like some type of bloom to me. @Cabezon your thoughts?
The last picture shows how the water was before it got brown.
SF
Caught a couple small fish and lost one nice fish. Lots of fish showing so decided to switch up to the floater and small fly stuff.
In the 10 minutes it took me to change up my line and leader, the water went from crystal clear to brown colored. The fish quit rising as well. There wasn’t enough rain yesterday to blow any creeks out. It kind of looks like some type of bloom to me. @Cabezon your thoughts?
The last picture shows how the water was before it got brown.
SF
Fished the canal for a few hours this morning. My boat is getting a trolling motor installed (yea spotlock ). My fishing buddy with a boat with spotlock was off doing family things so decided to use the tube/pontoon in the salt for the first time. Good conditions for it, not a huge tide and almost no wind. I did not see him, so hopefully I was not floating around in the scummed up water where @Stonedfish was!
Really solid fishing. Not quite as good as last weekend but still a good number of fish landed. I used a handful of flies but a peach/orange shrimp and worm pattern with olive schlappen head and tan barred rabbit body out fished the rest (lower left in pic).
Flies.
). My fishing buddy with a boat with spotlock was off doing family things so decided to use the tube/pontoon in the salt for the first time. Good conditions for it, not a huge tide and almost no wind. I did not see him, so hopefully I was not floating around in the scummed up water where @Stonedfish was!Really solid fishing. Not quite as good as last weekend but still a good number of fish landed. I used a handful of flies but a peach/orange shrimp and worm pattern with olive schlappen head and tan barred rabbit body out fished the rest (lower left in pic).
Flies.
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Hi SF, I wonder if you were seeing a contact zone between freshwater (clear) and saltwater (cloudy). The cloudiness in the water is likely the result of a bloom. But we haven't had that much sunny weather to trigger a bloom though the days are growing longer, slowly, slowly... If the temperatures are equal, saltwater is denser than freshwater. But colder water is denser than warmer water. So, if you have cold freshwater meeting warmer saltwater they may not stratify vertically.
Steve
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