Visiting an old friend

The theme song for my trip could be this:


Climbing up the creek seemed just a little harder than I recall, and threading small hook eyes has become a small challenge. That’s new.

The woods were busy. Crawling with people. It’s always a relief in that case to see your pullout open.

I like how this place has a variety of fish. Some that look like coastal cutts and some that look westslopey. Right off the bat I got one of the coastals.

It was here

Got it on this

A little further up, I found one of the redbellies I was looking for.

Here

The best pool on this stretch yielded nothing. I had a golden stone with caddis dropper rigged in the box, so tied it on and flopped it in there. First drift, boom, the would be fish of the day, on and off. Ended up getting one on the dropper, then cut that off and put the old peacock stimmy on, which produced a few more fish. 1/pool.

 

[Dave M]

Old Washington stocking reports show “Montana Black Spot” (westslope cutthroat) stocked into quite a few high lakes. Through those stockings, they appear to have established a foothold in a few westside Cascade drainages. There was a guy on the old site who caught one in Skagit tidewater!

I think the westslopes in some Central WA rivers were also introduced but I can’t recall the history.

I caught one on the lower Sauk, more silvery, sparsely spotted. About 15yrs ago swinging a size 1 spey fly.
Beautiful fish.

 

[dflett68]

Have caught 2 west slopes cutthroat on they Skykomish both below Gold Bar.

same here, as low as monroe. i just figured it was gravity and time considering the populations higher up in the system.

 

[Buzzy]

I agree that over the decades our Cascade creeks have gotten much longer and steeper, the mountains must be still growing.

Curt - This must be true or it sure seems to be.

@Matt B - Great report and pictures.

 

[Smalma]

Buzzy -
Ever since in turning 70 6 years ago it is obvious to me that those darn mountains and their creeks have under gone another significant growth spurt!

curt

 

[skyriver]

Have caught 2 west slopes cutthroat on they Skykomish both below Gold Bar.

A friend had a client catch this fish at IRS.
View attachment 69360
Sure looks like a Brooke trout, I believe there is a small population in Olney creek, a trib to the Wallace.

I used to catch brookies in Barclay Creek and I know several lakes in the watershed have been planted with them over the years. Still really weird to see one in the main river like that.
Btw, Westslopes in Barclay too. From the "Montana Blackspot" days.

 

[Matt B]

I used to catch brookies in Barclay Creek and I know several lakes in the watershed have been planted with them over the years. Still really weird to see one in the main river like that.
Btw, Westslopes in Barclay too. From the "Montana Blackspot" days.

Some of that drainage was hit by the Bolt Creek fire, although the fire was mostly on the other (highway) side of the mountain. Hopefully the streams and fisheries hang on well enough as the landscape greens back up.

 

[SKYKO]

Excuse the thread drift, given Barclay creek came up thought I'd share this catch by my uncle Harold, September 1952 from Barclay, the creek not the lake. A limit laid out on the Everett Herald, they didn't always catch and kill but certainly did from time to time, I know we still did when I was a kid in the 70's.

 

[Matt B]

Excuse the thread drift, given Barclay creek came up thought I'd share this catch by my uncle Harold, September 1952 from Barclay, the creek not the lake. A limit laid out on the Everett Herald, they didn't always catch and kill but certainly did from time to time, I know we still did when I was a kid in the 70's.View attachment 69884

Thanks for sharing that bit of local history. They're all such similar size. Could they be stockers?

 

[SKYKO]

Not sure about the 50's and stocking the creeks, I know they used to stock the N Fork in the 70's with catchable sized rainbows. My guess is he caught 2 or 3 times that many that day and was selectively keeping the bigger fish, that would have been a pretty typical approach for them