Coming home from a family reunion on Chinook Pass yesterday, I was faced with
several great fishing streams- Naches, Yakima and Rocky Ford. Normally, I
would have fished either the Naches or the Yakima but since I still am in a
leg brace from my knee surgery in June I decided I better do the wise thing
and settle for the flat terrain of Rocky Ford.
By the time I arrived at Rocky Ford it was 2:00 and about 98 degrees. There
were only about a half a dozen folks on the whole upper section and I easily
made my way to my favorite spot- the island down by the second hatchery.
Since it was so warm, the hoppers were quite abundent and I decided a hopper
pattern would do the trick. On about the 6th cast, I tied into a fat ol hog
but he spit the fly out on his initial run upstream. Over the next half hour
I had several looks but no takers. Finally, just as I was getting ready to
change patterns, a 22 incher smacked it and put up a nice fight before coming
to the net.
Those were the only two hook ups I had in about 2 hours of fishing. I had
dozens of looks so would guess my 5x tippit was a tad too big for a bright
sunny day. The San Juan Worm drew the most looks. Fish would start moving
towards it from 6 feet away but would all turn away at the last moment. The
BWO also did well and I think I would have had another taker but the wind had
blown my fly back towards the line when it landed and that spooked the fish
as he was coming towards the fly.
There were tons of adult damsels flying around but no real hatch to speak of.
A couple of gentleman were doing well just below the waterfall at the second
hatchery. I heard them say something about a green bugger drifting around.
I tried a few drys below them but the water was moving too fast and I didn't
feel up to hikng down any further due to the heat.
The fish have definetly put on the feed bags now so if you are in the same
zip code, swing on buy. Just remember your 6 or 7X tippit!
Mike
Spangle, WA
