I headed out to the yak again Saturday and decided to drive down 10 and look at the water. I took a monocular with me to try and scope out likely spots. It was weird it seemed that when I looked through the monocular it canceled out my polarization of my glasses. So it ended up being better to just look without it. At one lookout I thought I spotted fish and so I hiked down into the canyon, probably a 100 - 200 foot climb. I was able to follow some of the deer trails down and made it just fine. As I was stringing up my rod at the bottom, I was thinking that I really hope I was right about those fish cause that was going to be one helluva climb back up. And then I saw a fish rise, which made the whole hike justifiable. I never moved any fish but it was fun place check out. After a grueling hike back out I continued on my way stopping to check sections out. In one area I found a ton of sucker fish holding along some structure on the bottom, which I only realized they were sucker fish till I strung up my rod and waded out close to them.
At this point I was close to Ellensburg so I drove down to the canyon. Boy was it crowded, lots of boats and lots of people. For the majority of the day I was unable to get any fish to look twice at what I had, I was nymphing I tried some dries. I'm not a very match the hatch kind of guy and so I think that definitely worked against me. Since I wasn't moving very many fish I decided to drive a lot farther down the canyon than I normally do, way past big pines camp ground. I found some nice riffles, was tired of throwing nymphs and threw on a skwala pattern. Fished the likely water with the pattern not moving any fish. Looking above me I saw a fish rise where I had already thrown my skwala pattern. I sorta followed the ring it made and I saw a adult skwala floating in the water. I looked at the skwala I was using and it didn't really look much like the skwala that just floated by. Still I cast up stream from me and tried to entice the fish with no luck. So I dug out my box of flies and sifted through the bigger flies I had. I came upon a Joe's hopper pattern, the two black wing casings looked more like the skwala than the pattern I was using. About this time a couple of canoers were floating down the river. I cast my fly up, wham! And then the fish just takes off into the current, my reel screams (granted my reel drag was set low so I could strip out line while casting) I finally work it back in. It wasn't huge probably 13 - 14 but when it hit the current man did it take off. It was one of those moments when you've had a hard day catching, a little frustrated, and tired, and you consciously make the right choices that pay off in fooling a good fish. Oh and someone else got to see it as well. :) I ended up catching a few more fish the rest of the day on that pattern. As night fell the fish, of course came out like crazy, though I couldn't figure out or see what they were eating. There were a couple of big guys just lazily sipping on small flies in a back eddy that drove me crazy. It was dark, but I decided to stop off at one more place I knew very well and swing a WB a few times. I ended up catching a 14" squaw fish. That was my day. Mark
