Klickitat Steelhead

Brian and I are back from fishing the Klickitat River in South Central Washington and it was epic.  We fished for two days at the Steelhead Range owned by Jack and Jen Mitchell (http://theeveninghatch.com/Klickitat.htm).

The Klickitat starts from the glacier on Mt. Adams which you can see from the ranch.

This time of year the fishing gets more consistent but it can be hit or miss with visibility depending on the weather for the glacier.  The river itself was really cool.  In total we covered somewhere around 27 miles.  Parts of it were pretty dicey and I was glad I wasn't rowing.  While we were there the flows were around 900 cfs, Jeff and the crew told us it hit 60,000 cfs this spring and there were significant changes from last year.

The fishing for the most part was really easy.  We would float down and look for the troughs, buckets and slots which basically were different color than the rest because it was deeper.  We had 7 and 8wts rigged with a nymph and an egg under a big indicator and let it ride.  The takes we slow and easy but after that it was anyones' guess how crazy the fish would go. 

The guy in the front of the boat did have an advantage.  In the first 45 minutes of fishing I hooked and landed 3.  Very quickly the trip was exceeding expectations.  The picture above is me with the "Corbra" aka Jonny.

One of the best parts is that we were wet wadding.  Even though I have about $2,000 in Simms waders I really like wearing shorts and sandals when fishing.  It was cool in the morning and at night but otherwise the 50+degree water was fine.



 The wild (unclipped fish) you are not supposed to take out of the water, hence the belly in for the photos.

I botched the picture of Brian with this 20+lb Chinook

And I botched this one (my bad Brian) - here he is with Kevin and nice wild fish.

We hooked almost 30 fish in 2 days and landed at least 20.  We were having so much fun that we stopped taking fish pictures.  It also made losing some fish that went absolutly crazy easier to handle.  Some fish just dominated us.  We even tried swing flies from spey rods too.  The fishing was great and mixing in some chunky 20+ inch whitefish (not pictured), 15 inch resident rainbows (not pictured) and about 50 smolts (also not pictured) you were able to stay in the game from 9:00 am to sun set.

I highly recommend it and I will be back. 

Fishing Update

It has been busy the past few weeks.  We've hit the St Croix a bunch of times but mainly wade fishing.  It's been great and we even hooked a few small muskies

The water came down through July and we couldn't get the boat on the Upper Upper St Croix and the wade fishing has been great around Cty Rd T and above (don't get lost though - we did).

It's also been nice because you can really work a spot thoroughly and see fish like this walleye and get it on the fly (my first on the fly, the next one was 21 inches but still difficult to get a good pic on).

It's also easier to manage the little rug-rats.

I've done a few floats too in the Grantsburg area and the water is getting pretty low.  We had to drag the boat a few times but it's been worth it.  I also fished the Snake from Pine City to the St Croix for the first time a few weeks ago.  Great water, it was maybe a little low when we went down but I will definitely do it every year from here on out. 

But summer is coming to an end, we've been in Minong almost every weekend since May.  I'll be heading to Washington to fish the Klickitat the 24th & 25th for steelhead, wish me luck.