Yakima report

[Tim Harris]

I hit the Yak today and found terrible weather but really good fishing.  Driving over the pass this morning I hit rain, then snow, then more rain and it didn’t really stop until past Cle Elum but never really warmed up much or cleared up at all.   I hit the river in the canyon around 9:15 and within 15 minutes had my first three trout on PT nymphs.   The morning nymphing was pretty good everywhere I hit and by 11:30 I was wanting to switch to dries but the only rises I was finding were the salmon smolt that were everywhere the water slowed a bit.  I kept on nymphing and doing some soft-hackle swinging picking up more fish but the wind was picking up and it was getting cold.  I got out of the water and took a long walk to another spot and decided if I didn’t see fish rise I’d stop and go home, this was about 1 p.m.      After warming up walking I found some sporadic BWOs hatching and a few non-smolts rising.  I began getting fish up on a #18 BWO Comparadun and worked my way upstream finding nice fish looking up.  I got lots of 10-14” fish, several in the 15-16” range and one fish that went 18”, it was the size of my net opening.   By 2:30 it was spitting rain and the hatch was blanketing most of the river and getting a fish to take your fly when there were naturals everywhere got tough.  The fish began getting more selective, I had a lot of refusals and you had to get a drift right on their line since they didn’t have to move to keep feeding.  I switched to a #20 and had very good luck on it from 2:30 – 4:00 getting enough fish that I totally lost count.  I walked probably a mile of water during that last 1.5 hours and found fish absolutely everywhere and BWOs all over the surface.   Finally I had to just stop and walk back to my car or I would probably have fished until dark.  Driving out I saw boats starting to row downstream, I have a feeling quite a few people got sidetracked by the hatch and decided it was time to start covering ground if they were going to hit the takeout before dark.   The weather looks to remain miserable for the weekend so it is possible that the fishing may stay hot during it if the wind isn’t too unbearable.    This spring has had the best BWOs I can remember in the spring, the low water is making the river so easy to fish and the nasty weather has really had the bugs out in full force.     Tim