Last weekend, my wife and I attended her grandfather’s funeral in Kalispell, Montana. Her Uncle took me to the South fork of the Flathead to fish for cutthroat and whitefish. The part of the river we were on had a steep rock dyke like that on parts of the Snoqualmie and made it difficult to cast to rising fish more than 30’ away. He caught a nice fish on the first cast and maybe one or two more during the afternoon on elk hair caddis, I watched a few rise to my fly and miss or refuse. I did catch one medium whitefish and watched the largest whitefish I have ever seen roam around where I couldn’t reach it.
The next afternoon I drove to a mountain stream with small runs and plunge pools and rainbows in the 10-12” size range. When I opened the trunk I found I had left my rod back in the hotel room. Discouraged, but still wanting to catch a fish, I found a way to attach my reel to the front of my chest pack and fish a muddler by crouching at the head of pools and runs. I caught and released one 10” rainbow, felt better about leaving my fly rod behind, and later I got to brag a little about being able to catch fish without using a fishing pole. My parents stayed with us this weekend so my dad and I could spend Saturday fishing for Coho. We launched a double sea kayak and paddled up the Snoqualmie from Duvall. We saw several fish jump, Coho and Searuns, but didn’t hook up with any. After several hours, we loaded up the kayak and drove to the Sky. where we saw more fish, but didn’t fare any better. We can blame the cloudy water, but I don’t think that had much to do with it. brian
