Headed over from rainy Seattle yesterday to snowy Ellensburg. As I drove down into the canyon with a light smattering of snow, I kinda wondered if I should've stayed home by the fire. While the numbers of fisherman were quite a bit less, when I drove by the run above umtanum there were three guys about 30 feet apart fishing.
Because there is Safeway gas in cle elum and I get a 6 cent discount plus Alaska miles, I've started making a point of stopping off in cle elum for gas. While I was there I decided to stop off under the bridge by the yak and fish it. After a while of nothing decided that I wanted to head down to the canyon and jumped back in the car. Started off above the umtanum bridge on the road side, the swallows were going crazy over the water so I figured that there must be some sort of hatch going off. Could see lots of white fish feeding. I fished all the way down to the bridge and picked up one large shouldered white fish and briefly hooked up with a couple of other ones. I was surprised that I didn't see any fish feeding as the swallows were really going crazy. I did run into a battered steelhead while I was wading. At one point I looked over and I saw this huge fish probably 24 - 30 inches long cruising back and forth in the shallows. It had some huge gashes on it's head and back that were all white, quite reminiscent of spent chums, but had a brilliant red side stripe. I swam pretty close to me, maybe 4 feet away. I tried to get a picture but it took off before I could get my camera out. Hiked back up to the car and drove down a ways past reds. Long story short, I found huge pod of fish feeding in a shallow flat. I ended up catching 6 bows in 45 minutes. Then the hatch died off and I had had to head back to Seattle. The fish ranged from 15 - 12 inches. It was really fun. I tried three different patterns for BWO and they seemed to like the Sparkle dun the best. It was a very cold and wet day with some snow in the morning, but the pod of fish made my day. Mark
