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I drove out from the gloomy rain of the Seattle area this morning to float the Yakima River in the rain shadow of the Cascades. The weather in the lower Canyon reach (from mile 20 to Red's Fly Shop) was beautiful, although a bit windy for casting.

I floated solo in my packraft, which isn't really a good craft for anchoring and fishing, so the plan was just to use the boat to move between spots to get out and wade. At this water level (1500 CFS at Umtanum, fairly low), there still aren't a lot of great spots for that, at least not compared to the total amount of water fishable from a drift boat. I can see why those are so popular on this river. Still, I found a few decent spots.

Insect activity was quiet. I saw one October Caddis flying around and a handful of other things, but the only numerous insects were Baetids of some sort (I didn't catch any), and they weren't especially thick. They did intersect with one of the better spots I stopped, though, and my first cast with a size 18 parachute BWO hooked a nice rainbow, around 18". I fought it for a few minutes and was beginning to tire it out, just about ready to pull the landing net off my back, when I got a little bit too aggressive against its bulldogging and it bent out the little hook and got away. I fished a cast's length downstream for half an hour or so, then tried that spot again, and to amazement I hooked a fish of the same size, in the same spot, on the same fly. It's possible there was more than one nice fish right there, but I'm more inclined to guess this was the same fish hitting again. I've never had a big trout give me a second chance so quickly. I've done it with naive little grayling in Alaska, but this was a first, if indeed that's what happened.

After that, surface activity really died down for the rest of the day. I spent (Spent: The wing position of many aquatic insects when they fall on the water after mating. The wings of both sides lay flat on the water. The word may be used to describe insects with their wings in that position, as well as the position itself.) some time swinging a small olive Sculpzilla, on which I missed too many strikes throughout the day. Some might have been small trout that only nipped the tail, but a couple fish were solidly on the line for a few seconds before dropping it. I think my ten years throwing dry flies to grayling dulled my other technique a bit. Finally I managed a solid hookup in a deep riffle and won a great fight with a 20" rainbow that kept dodging the net, trying to run between my feet, and other crafty tricks.

Mule deer, quail, and other wildlife complemented the golden canyon scenery to make this trip really enjoyable, even though the fishing was slow at times.

I've been itching to photograph one of these for years and had an unexpected opportunity tonight when this one flew into a house full of aquatic scientists. It's the first insect I've collected for this site by chasing it around a kitchen with a tupperware container.

I just posted a report on my Labor Day weekend fishing adventure, trying to add a Golden Trout to my life list. Physically, this was the hardest thing I've ever done by far, and it was the only adventure that's ever left me committed to never doing anything remotely like it ever again. But I did encounter some interesting fish -- read the Golden Trout trip report to see how that went.

I had some nice fishing for pretty little westslope cutts the other night, but first I got mysteriously skunked on a couple stretches of the same stream that should have been really good. I don't mind a couple hours of "fishing instead of catching," but it is an interesting puzzle to be solved. I asked the locals on the Washington Flyfishing Forum, so I'll just quote what I wrote there:

I had an interesting experience yesterday evening (July 31st) fishing a very small stream on the east slope of the Cascades above 3,000 feet. When I was there for the first time eight days earlier, I was catching a pretty little westslope cutt (or five) in every likely-looking pool and pocket. Yesterday, fishing adjacent reaches at the exact same time of day, under similar weather conditions, I saw no sign of any trout. Not so much as a fingerling nipped at my fly, and no shadows darted away when I waded into a pool.

I'm new to this area and cutthroat fishing, but I've fished a lot of small streams elsewhere, and they've always been really consistent unless there's some obvious weather or seasonal reason why the fishing would change. To have a piece of water that was teeming with fish a week ago seem totally empty now was really surprising. At first I thought maybe I had gone in too far upstream above some impassible barrier, so I went back down to where I left off catching fish last week, and there was still no sign of fish in several pools that should have been full of them.

Finally, I guessed maybe the fish were making some spawning-related movements even farther into the headwaters, although that seemed unlikely. I should still have seen some immature fish scattered throughout the lower reaches. Nevertheless, I drove up even higher to try another reach, and the stream was back to normal: eager, beautiful fish everywhere I expected them. Fishing was great until dark.

I don't think the fish I caught all moved up from the reaches where I got skunked, because there are just too many barriers to migration at this water level. Temperature doesn't seem to fit as an explanation, either, because the water was plenty cool in this shady headwater throughout both trips. Hatches also don't seem to explain it; they're rarely important in streams of this character, and only tiny midges were abundant.

So I'm kind of out of ideas and wondering if anyone experienced with these fish and small Cascades streams has an explanation for the odd shift in action. Of course, I'm not complaining about briefly not catching fish -- but solving the mystery of some unusual pattern is part of the fun.

Just to follow up on a couple of the ideas that were suggested over there:

- I started fishing right around 5 pm on both days, and the water temperature was cool enough I don't think there was a need to wait for dusk before the fish would become active.

- This stream is far enough off the beaten path that it's very unlikely any angler went before me through either reach where I got skunked, and almost certain that didn't happen in both reaches.