A friend and I spent last Wed and Thursday on the Yakima as we do at least once every fall. I am by no means an expert on the Yak as it is a long trip from my home, however my distinct opinion was it was as slow as it gets there. We started on Wed AM from Klocke road just north of E'burg. There is a small access just under the freeway there. My friend is a dyed in the wool dry fly guy and spent the morning with a reddish orange stimulator size 10. Pounding the banks hard he managed three 8 inchers in 4 hours of wading. I started out with a nasty stonefly nymph in size humongous with a bead head GRHE dropper. I managed to catch zippo. After a couple of hours I switched over to an orange Madam-X size 12 that brought one nice fish up but no hookup. Around 14:30 we moved up to the area around the diversion dam a little ways further upstream. There were several folks ahead of us above the dam so we moved down and fished a couple of runs between the dam and the RR bridge. I put on a size 8 October Caddis and immediately caught a nice 14" fish. Then ... nothing. I went through the entire panoply of my fly box to no avail. We fished up and over the dam until dark with no real result. There were October Caddis all over the place ovipositing but no fish were rising, none. The next day we floated part of the Canyon with a guide from the Worley Bugger Fly Co. in E'Burg. I don't own a drift boat so we usually splurge once a year for a trip. This is our fourth trip with them so that should speak to my opinion of their service. Anyway we put in at Umtanum and pulled at a place they call the Slab (big slab of concrete, Yak experts may have a better name). It was a beautiful day and a great drift but in fact the fishing was really slow. I fished a variety of sparkle buggers with rubber legs and size EDBD nymph droppers on a ultra fast sink tip line. I caught a couple of 14 inchers and one really nice 16+ inch fish through the day by pounding the bank and stripping erratically. I also caught two of the biggest squawfish I have ever seen and one small whitefish. My friend spent the day on the surface again changing flies all day. His tally was one 8 incher. Overall impression was that it was really slow fishing. We saw quite a few dead salmon around and a few mutilated trout that may have had nasty encounters with salmon. We were not terribly plagued by smolt although I caught one and my friend had a few smolts hit little dries. In spite of trying virtually dozens of likely patterns in a range of sizes and colors we simply could not get fish to come to the surface for love or money. Streamers and nymphs ruled on this trip. In spite of how slow things were we had a great time. The river is beautiful this time of year and the weather couldn't have been better although by Thurs night the wind was howling and the storm was headed in. I am headed back out that way next week for another go at the Yak and a first time for one of the central basin lakes (Dry Falls?, where?). Anybody have reports or recommendations for an experienced tuber on his first expedition to one of these lakes? Also I would be really interested in hearing reports from anyone who fishes the Yak this week. Thanks all, Jeff Marso [EMAIL PROTECTED] :w
