For starters, the early waterfowl season was impressive to say the least. As some know I have a wonderful labrador named Jesse, I bought her last May from Longhollow retrievers, she is better than I could have ever imagined, even with me, an un-experianced trainer she has become an incredible retrieving machine. She soon tested out her new love as limits of Wigeon and bluebills were quite easy til nearly Christmas. Now not so much, but we stayed the coarse and gave her every experiance I could on her first season afield, Ducks on the Columbia, Geese in Montana and a few chucker and quail in the back yard. We are looking forward to out next trip here real soon…She’s out rolling in the snow right now.
2011 Fall steelhead was better than 2010 as angler pressure was way down and we had some good water volume, could have done with out the early freeze but thats fishing. I feel that in the next few season we will see an evening off of the status quo from that ridiculously easy season of ’09. By then we will be feeling good about 6 fish days again.
On a more recent note Aaron , YT, and I made a shake down cruise to Forks last week before the big snow hit and came away with 6 fish a day, pretty damn good for January even found a few in the high teens. The Hoh river is looking awesome for the swing game and the Sol Duc has loads of natives already running its emerald waters. I think we are in for another year of wild fish up to our ears and maybe the weather will accommodate. As for now we are waiting out the next storm hoping the warm up will not produce a two week flood.
Once again the Puget Sound rivers are closing early due to poor wild fish escapement, (according to WDFW). Now would be a good time to send off some cash donations to the wild steelhead coalition, CCA or whatever your favorite charity would be I like the more radical ones of coarse. Along with that, drop a letter to the Gov telling her shes nuts for letting the Icon of the NW down and maybe the wdfw director @ director@dfw.wa.gov asking him to use whatever resources the state has to figure this thing out, as the bullshit politics ain’t working. Maybe if the dept would grow some balls and look into the fish farming they have approved they might find the cause. I know that if the feds can turn around the Upper Columbia the WDFW should be able to use that technology to help the Puget Sound Rivers..OK off the soapbox for now.
It looks like we have some Geese back into the basin and them Mallards that have been in Canada all year should be moving down we, will see, heading out for another go soon.
We start out on the Olympic Peninsula Feb 3 -7 with spey fishing classes and have a few spots open, this goes for 300 a day fully hosted at the Bogy House Lodge, as good as the early wild run is I predict we will catch a few wiley ones while getting our snap T on…Note I said fishing classes, you will learn to fish the swing not just throw it accross and hope!
This season we will be guiding later into April than in the past. In the last few seasons I have left Forks with good numbers of chrome bright steelhead still pushing in and with the NO NETTING schedule in April we have a good chunk of time without them intercepting there 50% .
We have good chunks of open dates after April 15 and a few in primetime yet to be filled, come and see what steelheading on the Olympic Peninsuila is all about, book a trip today. Jeff@Brazdasflyfishing.com 253-307-3210
Hope to see ya on the river, Jeff