Longtime lurker and occasional commenter so here's my first foray into a report! Apologies if the formatting/pictures come through wonky. I spent the weekend in one of my favorite E. WA river valleys. I had a hankerin to go head hunting for large aggressive trout and was determined to only throw streamers the entire weekend to that effect. On Friday we made the ~4 hr drive from the Seattle area out to what a fellow fishy friend likes to call 'God's Country', and I don't blame him. We had beautiful weather the entire time and a mix of overcast/spotty cloud cover on Saturday morning which really seemed to help the streamer bite.
First one to the net was a little underwhelming but hit hard right after the drop off that I was hoping would hold some good fish. Still put up a good fight for a little guy and was a good validation that I was in the right zone.
The next one grabbed and felt much bigger, a few heavy head shakes and fun run or two later and this dandy of a bull trout was in the net. With the hook having fell out (thanks barbless!), we thanked him for his time, and quickly released.
Wondering just how many “apex predators of the pool” called this drop off home I returned my now fish tested and approved sculpin back into the current and was rewarded with another heavy hitter who I thought at first from his coloring was a steelhead but upon netting and rolling over turned out to be a tank of a cutthroat. (Maybe some mixed trout DNA shenanigans going on?). Looked steely here:
Less so here:
The rest of the weekend was full of lovely cutthroat all ranging in the 12-18 inch range and all feisty enough to be fun on the 6wt but nothing even came close to that first pool.
A more common representation:
Here are some other snapshots from the weekend:
Our state park cabin we called home for the weekend.
Saturday morning's fishy weather
Sunset over the lake from our cabin.
First one to the net was a little underwhelming but hit hard right after the drop off that I was hoping would hold some good fish. Still put up a good fight for a little guy and was a good validation that I was in the right zone.
The next one grabbed and felt much bigger, a few heavy head shakes and fun run or two later and this dandy of a bull trout was in the net. With the hook having fell out (thanks barbless!), we thanked him for his time, and quickly released.
Wondering just how many “apex predators of the pool” called this drop off home I returned my now fish tested and approved sculpin back into the current and was rewarded with another heavy hitter who I thought at first from his coloring was a steelhead but upon netting and rolling over turned out to be a tank of a cutthroat. (Maybe some mixed trout DNA shenanigans going on?). Looked steely here:
Less so here:
The rest of the weekend was full of lovely cutthroat all ranging in the 12-18 inch range and all feisty enough to be fun on the 6wt but nothing even came close to that first pool.
A more common representation:
Here are some other snapshots from the weekend:
Our state park cabin we called home for the weekend.
Saturday morning's fishy weather
Sunset over the lake from our cabin.
