Lament
- Thread starter Matt B
- Start date
Have spent many a fall day on that stream throwing muddlers, silver browns and classic scottish wet flies.
I am partial to Knutsen’s and reverse spiders, but the cutts are usually pretty game for a variety of flies and tactics.
Wife and I took walks to a couple of my old favorite searun holes on the river yesterday. I saw them, they’re still there in the usual spots. Spent four decades enjoying them. Comforting that they’re there, but small consolation for not being able to fish.
Never hooked or harmed a Chinook fishing size 10’s down to 14’s for cutthroat’s there in all those years. It’s sad it’s closed in theory for that reason.
Never hooked or harmed a Chinook fishing size 10’s down to 14’s for cutthroat’s there in all those years. It’s sad it’s closed in theory for that reason.
In 50 years of fishing that river for cutts i’ve caught 1 chinook jack about 15” and no chinook adults.
50 years. (!) If I think about the next 50 years there, well…Based on habitat conditions now, current status and trends, and SWAGs about how things are going to continue to develop, I suspect the Chinook will not “recover,” and may come close to blinking out, but cutthroat will persist at levels similar to what we see now, at least in part due to their ability to utilize smaller habitat niches that may in the future move around spatially but will still probably remain accessible and productive, and collectively comprise a significant amount, enough to sustain a fishery.
Aw heck, I don’t know, I guess I’m talking off the top of my head a bit and just missing those cutthroat.
I have a book by a UW fisheries biologist and he's found that cutts are 6X more populous than salmonoids in urban streams while salmonoids are 8X more populous than cutts in pristine wild streams. I'd say the stream we are thinking about is more developed as opposed to completely wild...
With nearly a century of fishing that river between us we ought to be awarded special privileges, don’t you think? I’m trying to keep a sense of humor about it.
I also try to keep in mind the great Teddy Roosevelt quote someone made here recently…
“Comparison is the Thief of Joy.”
4 chinook jacks in 18 years vs my 1 chinook jack in 50 years…spill your secret method Paige.
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SilverFly
Legend
Used to catch chinook about that size on the Sandy in OR, but in early summer. Dad and I theorized they were springer "micro jacks". Too big and fat to have stayed in the river, but too small to have spent much, if any time fully in the salt. Like maybe they got to the estuary and gorged for a year(ish) then got homesick?
Chinook half salts. Could be.
Have long considered the sea-run cutthroat fishing on the central Sound "S" rivers to be both an iconic PNW fisheries as well one of the best wild trout regional fisheries.
I too have 50 years of experience on the river in question with roughly equal experience on the other "S" rivers. I agree with Matt B.'s assessment of the future of the wild Chinook and cutthroat in the basin. Staying with the cutthroat their key environments are found in the small lower elevation, low gradient lowland streams that supply their spawning and juvenile rearing. They use the larger river(s) for migration from and back to those little creeks with only moderate freshwater feeding in the late summer/fall.
Even with global warming those small streams seem to continue to produce our beloved cutthroat. Even as the flows decreased and the summer dewatering of the upper reaches the cutthroat continue to thrive. Largely because the amount of preferred cutthroat has remained constant (though may have move downstream). To that point my single best day in those 50 years of targeting cutthroat occurred just 4 years ago (just a morning of fishing).
I too have caught a few Chinook Jacks while targeting sea-runs which typically of that shown by Paige; that is hatchery fish (clipped) and generally less than 20 inches in length. I think those fish have migrated to the salt at the same time and size as the other Chinook but just return after that summer of rearing and like all of our Chinook at smaller sizes than seem 50 to 100 years ago. The good news is that in determining the by-catch of Chinook in our sea-run fisheries that Jacks are not included.
It is heart breaking how our opportunity to this wonderful regional has been constrained. But if I were to be honest much of blame lies with our own fly-fishing community and what generally is considered to be acceptable. Many are more than a few are willing in any "legal "fishery" to target other species to become "facebook" heroes.
In the last decade or so collectively in the region we have lost several of the wild trout fisheries that by most standards could have been considered blue ribbon fisheries.
Curt
I too have 50 years of experience on the river in question with roughly equal experience on the other "S" rivers. I agree with Matt B.'s assessment of the future of the wild Chinook and cutthroat in the basin. Staying with the cutthroat their key environments are found in the small lower elevation, low gradient lowland streams that supply their spawning and juvenile rearing. They use the larger river(s) for migration from and back to those little creeks with only moderate freshwater feeding in the late summer/fall.
Even with global warming those small streams seem to continue to produce our beloved cutthroat. Even as the flows decreased and the summer dewatering of the upper reaches the cutthroat continue to thrive. Largely because the amount of preferred cutthroat has remained constant (though may have move downstream). To that point my single best day in those 50 years of targeting cutthroat occurred just 4 years ago (just a morning of fishing).
I too have caught a few Chinook Jacks while targeting sea-runs which typically of that shown by Paige; that is hatchery fish (clipped) and generally less than 20 inches in length. I think those fish have migrated to the salt at the same time and size as the other Chinook but just return after that summer of rearing and like all of our Chinook at smaller sizes than seem 50 to 100 years ago. The good news is that in determining the by-catch of Chinook in our sea-run fisheries that Jacks are not included.
It is heart breaking how our opportunity to this wonderful regional has been constrained. But if I were to be honest much of blame lies with our own fly-fishing community and what generally is considered to be acceptable. Many are more than a few are willing in any "legal "fishery" to target other species to become "facebook" heroes.
In the last decade or so collectively in the region we have lost several of the wild trout fisheries that by most standards could have been considered blue ribbon fisheries.
Curt
Ugh, acceptable to whom? There’s always been that element, I suppose. It is a shame we manage to it. The “lowest common denominator.” Because the logic doesn’t really make sense. Lawbreakers will break the law regardless, right? Whether it’s open to fly fish for trout or not? So we can have it open and let the law abiders legally trout fish while poachers poach, or we can close it to law abiding trout fishers while poachers poach.
I fish the lower section of the NFS every fall for the last 7 years. I never traveled very far up river due to limited time after work, now due to the closure.
I’ve have traveled nearly the entire length of the open section this year in four different trips and have only caught 1 cutthroat around 13”. I usually average 2 fish per 3 hour fishing trip.
My normal spots that used to produce fish have more sand and less rock than they did a couple years ago.
I’ve have traveled nearly the entire length of the open section this year in four different trips and have only caught 1 cutthroat around 13”. I usually average 2 fish per 3 hour fishing trip.
My normal spots that used to produce fish have more sand and less rock than they did a couple years ago.