I fished the Hansen's Ponds stretch today from about 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.
Flows were steady at about 470 cfs and visibility was excellent. The weather was great, sunny and warm with just a little bit of wind in the afternoon which quickly died down. There was some Midge activity; a few Baetis here and there, never really a hatch; quite a few crane flies were ovipositing; and I saw a few October Caddis, one of which landed on me and allowed me a good look at it - a little smaller than I expected, perhaps a #12, and the body wasn't very orange, sort of a dirty, almost orange color. I saw around twenty rotting chinook carcasses. Some of them had their tails cut off. Is this where they get tagged? At first I just thought it was odd but when I saw that about half of them were like this I figured it was probably WDFW collecting tags. There were only a few sporadic rises here and there so I nymphed the whole time. I started with a #10 Copper John with a #16 Green Rockworm dropper. I got two bows on the C.J., one healthy one about 14", and two whitefish on the rockworm. Thinking that I was really working for a few fish I switched to a #16 BH FB PT followed by a #18 Olive Biot Softhackle. The second rig didn't pay off at all through the next couple riffles so I switched again, this time to a #10 BH CDC Prince with a #18 BH FB PT dropper. As soon as I switched I started hooking up again and had three more bows before I left that riffle, one on the Prince and two on the PT, one of which was a really fat, strong 13-incher. I kept working it through a few more riffles and runs where I picked up another bow and a whitefish, and worked my way back up to my truck. Nearly there, I managed one more bow. So, total for three hours was 7 bows and 3 whitefish - not bad for a few hours but I really felt like I had to work hard for them, it was never really hot fishing. For those who don't know, the Hansen's Ponds road ends now where the hole referred to by locals as "the slammer" used to be. A small diversion channel has been created that runs into the ponds and a parking area was created there. The ponds are now considered part of the Yakima and are under the same regulations. A nice little footbridge crosses the channel to a footpath where the road used to be. A lot of new trees are being planted in hopes of providing more shade for the ponds which I understand have been getting to hot. The big swirling hole, the slammer, is gone. They restructured the river a bit: now there's a shallow weir that forces the main current through a narrower gap and forms a big riffle and an eddy. I didn't get a single strike in the new habitat - I'm thinking maybe the insect population took a hit there and/or it'll be a while before the fish take to it - or maybe it's just not a good spot now. On my wade downstream there were no fishermen about. On the wade back I encountered a couple boats and a pair of wade fishers. Another nice day of Fall fishing. -tight lines- Jim
