Hi Patrick, Good for you. The road to this place is right in Startup, but I don't know the name of the road, and a quick look at my Gazzateer shows me it isn't marked. When you're just about in the middle of Startup you take a right on a road over a bridge (over the Wallace) and continue on for a quarter mile or so, where the road angles a sharp right (over RR tracks) and continues on for another quarter mile, where it angles another sharp right (NW, and a second time over RR tracks). Then the road angles and heads due West for about a half mile, paralleling the RR tracks on the south bank of the road. You will find several cars in an obvious parking area to the left at that next bend in the road. You can either cross the RR tracks on foot and follow trails down the north bank of the Sky to where the Sky merges with the Wallace (sometimes the trail is hard to follow and you have to switchback) or you can walk down (west) on the RR tracks a 1/4 mile and slip under the RR bridge to the Wallace and follow it to it's confluence with the Sky. Be advised the trains move through here quite often.
I was using flies a buddy of mine tied, and I'm not trying to secret or anything, but I don't know the names. The pink salmon flies he tied last season still work fine, and are a lead "cone head" type of short bodied bugger type fly in pink yarn and marabou. The flies he tied this year are smaller "clouser minnow" type flies, done in pink marabou and white/crytal mylar, with leadhead eyes. At first we thought these Clouser flies were killing them, but we had almost as many hookups with the older conehead fly as we did with the clouser. My buddy estimates he caught around "50" last week on this clouser. The really neat thing is that we had very few snagged fish, which is always a hazard fishing pinks. We'd cast across and upstream and let the flies sink as we mended upstream and tried to keep the line taught. We barely strip - just enough to keep the line taught and the fly off the bottom, and the pinks took care of the rest. Some fish hit real hard and some just are "there" like a rock when you raise your rod tip. We caught almost all bucks and only had about 3-4 hens between us. Wish I could tell you more about the flies, but I don't tie. Sky Valley Sports in Monroe might be able to help you with flies on your way up, just try and make sure they are weighted, unless you're using a sink tip. Or better yet, try Swede's in Woodinville. By the way, we prefer floating lines to sink tips. No "pearls of wisdom" here, Patrick, but I hope it helps. Take care, Cliff Patrick Nave wrote: > Cliff, my son and I will be heading to this place Monday morning. Where is > it, what were you using to catch the pinks? Plus any tips on how to fish > them? I have never been to the place where the Wallace connects with the > Sky but was in Gold Bar today across from the Shell Station and had no > luck. I await your pearls of wisdom. > > Pat > > Patrick Nave > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > www.family4today.com
