Images and Text Copyright Juro Mukai and the Flyfishing Forum (All Rights Reserved)


Photo Copyright April 2000 Andre Lorenz, All Rights Reserved
That's a 15 foot, 10wt two-handed Sage Spey rod laying next to the native searun rainbow in the photo.  Andre measured the fish at around 35", nearly a yard of giant warrior trout with thousands of open ocean miles to it's credit.  The handsome fish was slowed temporarily on it's journey to natal waters, yet was caringly released to accomplish it's mission.  

As winter releases it's grip on the Pacific Northwest, the majority of hatchery winter steelhead runs have subsided and the native steelhead begin to make their presence known in the classic rivers of the region.  To bring one of these fish to the fly is for many fly fishermen the PhD of flyfishing, the Holy Grail, the mecca, the dream.  This is so for me, and it's true for the steelhead "hardcores" I had the privilege to fish with last week.


Tyler, Brian and Duggan and a Skykomish Sunrise
I arrived at 2am on a Thursday night (Friday morning) and had just enough time for an all-night breakfast joint before meeting the gang on the river.  Bill generously met me at SEATAC airport at that time.  Bill is a recent transplant from Boston to Seattle.  Over the years, he had visited the pacific northwest often, and we fished stripers together often too.  It wasn't the first o'dark thirty we'd seen for the sake of chasing stripers on the Cape, or seeking steel on the Sky.  The only difference was, now I was the visitor.

The all-night antics were a fitting beginning for the pursuit often described as "many countless hours of boredom interrupted by occasional moments of sheer ecstasy".  I guess if this form of boredom is acceptable, to be standing knee-deep in glacial streams in the shadows of towering cedars and snow-capped mountains watching bald eagles soar overhead with the sweet smell of cottonwoods in the air... then spring steelheading with a fly is itself acceptable - in fact for some it's sheer obsession.  It's safe to say that Tyler, Brian, Duggan, Bill, and Andre all fall into that category.

Tyler was down from British Columbia, showing us just how much a Spey rod can do.  Brian and I have been terrorizing the rivers and saltchuck for years, and sometimes it seem 3,000 miles of distance hasn't put a damper on our stomping routes.  He even visited the Cape last summer for stripers and blues.  Duggan, esteemed winner of the first native steelhead of Y2K contest, didn't need to say it but I could just tell the Skykomish was his home water as the ride downriver began and the river unfolded before us with each riffle, run and rapid.


Tyler's Aerial Display (click to enlarge)
It was my extreme pleasure to be able to romp through the wild rivers of the pacific northwest with fellow Forum members last week.  I was frustrated to be so far removed from a working Spey cast after a year - but I value every opportunity to relive my passion for steelhead and had a fantastic visit.
We fished the Skykomish River in the Cascades east of Seattle, the lower, middle and upper Hoh River in the Olympic Rainforest, The upper Sol Duc, and the Skagit and Sauk Rivers in the North Cascade Mountains.  The scenic vistas and idyllic rivers were uplifting to the soul and the fish, albeit characteristically scarce, not disappointing when hooked.  Steelhead aren't just about their drop-dead looks, they are some of the meanest fighting fish that swim.  


Takes two pictures to capture even a little of the beauty of the North Cascades
(CLICK for mpeg video - for high speed users!)
They generate burst speeds that make false albacore seem lazy, although the run durations are much shorter.  They leap with all the zeal of tarpon, and most amazingly they are three feet of solid searun silver trout.  Such fish simply shouldn't be easy to find, hook or land - it just wouldn't be right!  That they are so difficult is only appropriate for what they represent - the embodiment of mother nature's potential given the chance, rolled up tight into a chrome torpedo trout from hell... or should I say "heaven"?

Onward Hoh!


The last bend before saltwater at the mouth of the Hoh River


We took the familiar Puget Sound ferry run to the Olympic Peninsula on Saturday morning and after some concerns about the blazing sunshine and air-clear waters of the Sol Duc and Calawah, we headed for the mouth of one of the truly wild rivers of "O.P." west side - the Hoh River.  Here the glacier-fed currents collide directly into the pounding pacific surfline - no dikes, docks, or shipping lanes, just ancient lava stacks and driftwood lining the on-ramp to the wild steelhead highway.  In a sense it's reassuring to see that such places do in fact still exist on the lower 48.

Brian and his faithful 15' T&T Spey 
rod at the mouth of the Hoh

The state of Washington believes that wild steelhead populations are healthy enough in the Hoh to permit catch and kill of these magnificent fish.  At first one might find it reassuring to think that a harvestable population of wild steelhead exists on the peninsula.  If we were to study the history of native fish populations in the region I'm sure we'd find this policy to be ridiculous.  There are so few populations of native steelhead left on the lower 48 and none are worth the risk of destroying.  The overwhelming majority of runs have already been 'replaced' by hatchery fisheries and there are tens of thousands of hatchery fish harvested from Northwest rivers.  There has to be a line drawn somewhere.  Bill, Brian and I agreed that harvest of native steelhead should be prohibited at all cost.  I cringed as I watched a bright native fish who had succumbed to a gob of roe and meet it's fate with a distinctly resonant clunk on the floor of an aluminum drift boat just above tidewater.

The Hoh Indians, rumored to be acting in protest of the exploitative native kill season, had their nets strewn across the first pool from tidewater.  We were told that they usually kept their nets out during this native return period, but they felt if Washington state fishery laws will allow non-Indian anglers to kill the river's native steelhead, they will net the natives in protest.  

With native steelhead being such a rare commodity, it seems ridiculous that the state allows their slaughter in the Hoh.  It's clear that native fishery regulations need to be revisited.

Throughout the day we watched mint-bright native steelhead get bonked and gutted down at the river mouth (four while we were there), and mid-river at Nolan's Creek (3 that I counted but we left early).  There were undoubtedly many others because the river was fishing very well and there was a non-stop driftboat flotilla pounding every hole.   This was a rate of native fish slaughter the three of us were not accustomed to seeing.  Even though I could feel the electricity of newly arriving wild steelhead in the currents and a shift in the gravel bar opened a vast new upstream section - the weekend crowd and carnage made the place unbearable so we headed into the rain forest park to escape the melee.  

In the park, the river ran beautifully clear and bright and purged the downstream madhouse from our minds.  Two forks of the upper Hoh come together at a spot where I've made some memorable visits over the years.  Brian showed me this spot a few years back, which I appreciate because I had always overlooked it while making my way into the park.  The last time I was there, a 10 pound class chrome bright summer fish took a "dark purple magic" pattern and kicked my butt inside out before chewing through my tippet.


Juro's Black Bunny Rat...
(CLICK for Recipe)

As I fought that fish, Brian was retrieving something from the vehicle so I hollered for him to grab my video camera on his way back.  We had already captured one steelhead on film and would end up getting another before the trip was through, but before he could get back to the river the fish had gnawed it's way through my tippet.


Brian's Killer Shrimp

But on this beautiful spring day it was Brian's turn to score.  Despite the fact that it was an unusually warm "bluebird" day on ultraclear waters, he hooked up with a bright spring fish on what appeared to me to be an ideal stretch for fisherman and fish.  He was swimming a new fly pattern he developed this spring, a real "eat-me" shrimp pattern which incorporates several innovative design aspects in one seductive arrangement.  The gravel along this pool was sloped toward the far side and there was structure to offer holding water to steelhead at the edge of the traveling lane.  Unfortunately, the knot must've had a knick in it and the fly parted from the tippet.  After seeing the bright silver flashes of a yard long searun trout illuminate a glacial pool on the end of your line, it's tough to never see the hard-earned prize gamefish up close and personal.   Most steelheaders know all about that situation.  As photogenic as they are, they sure don't like to come in for that photo op!
Walking thru the grove to the river, we came upon the littered bones of a deer.  To put it mildly, it had been completely assimilated by forest inhabitants.  Nature has a way of using everything without waste.

We stopped at the "Hard Rain Cafe", a favorite little haven in the middle of nowhere on the road that parallels the Upper Hoh.  Under the slogan "Rain Happens", they offer lots of unique paraphernalia like slug magnets and carry some of the regions great microbrews.  They'll also cook up a great beef burger or salmon burger (very good!) which gave us just the mid-afternoon break we needed to run to the Sol Duc River for the weekend closer.

Bright Waters...

Sunlight breaks through the rain forest canopy to illuminate the lichens along the Upper Sol Duc River
When I think about the cloak of atmosphere we have around our lonely blue planet in the cosmos, I realize it's the abundance of water we have on our precious orb that gives us bluebird skies and shirtsleeves on spring day on the river.  While other planets get hours of radiation alternating with hours of poisonous subzero blackness, we get cirrus clouds and steelhead on rivers like the Sol Duc and Hoh in the Olympic Rain Forest.  

Along these streams an elementary school principal by the name of Syd Glasso solved peer squabbles by day, and set the stage for a renaissance of Spey fishing by night.

And his weekends?  On the river for sure.  I know this because I've studied color plates of his flies and hve concluded that only someone who understands the psyche of a steelhead could tie as he did.  His flies are truly a tribute to the fish that they seduce, in fact it's rumored that his respect for the steelhead was so deep that he would lay the fly on the bank where he retained a steelhead.  Now that's a guy I wouldn't mind getting low-holed by.  I guess I couldn't take the fly if I had seen Syd put it there, but it would certainly be a treat to have stumbled upon a Quillayute Spey on a fall morning, put it in my box, and find out later it was tied by Syd Glasso!  


"Sol Duc" loosely translates to "bright waters"

His genius was widely admired, even by salmon legend Col. Bates of the UK, among countless others.  They conducted fly swaps in those days by snail mail, bridging several thousand miles and diverse cultures to form a connection in terms of steel, feathers, floss and dubbing.  In these exchanges they shared a common passion for their species and the places they inhabit like we do today using the internet.  His patterns are still among the most representative of the celebration of steelheading in the Northwest.  (See Bob Veverka's Sol Duc Spey Article)

The Magic of the Cascade Mountain Streams

When the world goes to sleep, I fill my shot glass with a slug of my special sherry cask Glenmorangie and step lightly through the faint forest trails in my minds eye until I can see the stones, sculpins and even the stonefly nymphs that lay beneath the symphony of currents gliding over the crotch of a well formed gravel tailout.  There I'll cast and I'll mend as my psyche rushes through the line like a sharply hauled cast, unraveling through the tippet to shiver the plumage of my fly in the nose of a ghostly gray silver torpedo trout.  The invasion will reach deeply into remnants of the steelhead's adolescence, flash past memories of thousands of turquoise ocean miles, even override an indelible desire to reach the gravel it wiggled from to invoke a violent side-swiping take worthy of the giant trophy trout that it is.

Making the connection was just the beginning.  The realization of having achieved the unachievable, to put a nose ring on a wild silver stallion, a dog leash on a lightning bolt - instantly enlightens me with unspoken explanations for my addiction to steelhead.  The reward seems almost excessive in light of what I've already gained from the chase... to know the voices of eagles and let my life flow upon the currents for precious intervals between obligations and deadlines; to balance on tiptoes against the push of the river to tie yesterday's inspiration to the tippet of today's hope.  But there's no time for gratitude now... 

The reel spins wildly, knocking my bewildered fingers about like candlepins, sounding off a percussive "brrrrraaatttttt" like jake brakes on a passing log truck.  I think to myself "geez I forgot how strong these things are!" as I catch my breath.  My eyes pry into the currents but like the dream where you can't run away, the river stones fade into a blur and I can't identify the shape, form, or reality of the force behind the runs that scream ten yards of line from my reel at a time despite the hardest palming I've done in a long time.  The fish surges right, zigs and zags, then clears the surface to reveal a whiteness of fins and flanks as pure as virgin snow, and a back as black as sin.  I saw it... Oh God yes, I saw it - and it was beautiful.  It was the reason I flew 3,000 miles; the reason I tossed sleeplessly and missed entire sentences spoken at business meetings and pantomimed Spey casting motions for no apparent reason in public places.  Yes, YES - it's a steelhead!

I yell "fish on"... "FISH  ON!!!", and feel a surge of confidence.  Andre looked upriver from his position a hundred yards away, then came to capture the moment with digital camera in hand.  The thought of landing this prize fills me with giddy joy as the fish continues to remind me that despite 15 feet of graphite, the battle is far from over.  As I dance the dance of give and take with this pretty Skagit River native, it tests my confidence by cartwheeling underwater several times.  The fly holds fast, and it occurs to me that the fly that fooled this fish was Ed Ward's Intruder, a fly I was almost tempted to change for something a bit more subtle in the ultra clear water conditions.  I was so glad I had not.


Loch Ness/Sasquatch/Area 51 Version of My Legendary Skagit Steelhead

By now, Ed and Andre were heading my way. The fish headed right at me as I struggled to keep tension, so I stumbled backward out of the river to maintain a bend in the rod.  It worked, the fish was still there.  It then made a U-turn, taking another hard downriver run.  I breathed a sigh of relief and braced as it made another run, then another.  It cart-wheeled underwater again before surging into a searing cross-current run.  At the end of this run, the ever-elusive steelhead threw the hook.  Just like that the chrome and ebony trophy melted back into the mystery of the fabled Skagit River as thousands of steelhead have done throughout this river's grand history as a spring native steelhead mecca.

Ed, Andre and I talked it over on the gravel bar like pitching coach, manager, and pitcher at the mound - me scratching my head after a long ball left the yard, but not feeling all too surprised given who was at bat.  This game's far from over.  As long as I live, I'll live for the game and will play it as hard as I can.


That's a bald eagle on top of the tree

Images and Text Copyright Juro Mukai 4/2000 (All Rights Reserved)