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Olympic Peninsula August 2025 – Day 4

May 27, 2026
Adventure, Coldwater, Exploring, Fish, Fishing, Fly Fishing, Freshwater, Hiking, Outdoors, Scouting, Travel, Wade Fishing
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For our last day of fishing we opted to gain some elevation and head into the mountains. The target wasn’t going to be coastal cutthroat today, but rather coastal rainbow trout. We were unlikely to run into any big steelhead, but were told there would be resident fish in this stream. I don’t know that I’ve ever caught rainbow trout in their native range, I’ve caught them pretty much everywhere else that I’ve fished for trout, so today was the day.

The river we fished had a trail that ran alongside it which made access pretty easy – we just parked at the trailhead and hiked as far as we were willing and then got in and started fishing. The river was crystal clear and the water was super cold – much colder than the last few days of fishing. It also had more volume than I was expecting, which was actually pretty nice, but made crossing it a little dicey in spots. It was a wide enough stream where Blake could stick to one side and I to another and we could kind of work it together as we moved upstream – really an ideal width.

It didn’t take long to start catching fish and the first fish I caught was not actually a coastal rainbow, but another species entirely. As I’ve learned from Gary Marston, it was a southern subspecies of Dolly Varden. Not what we came for, but a delightful bycatch! My first Dolly and really my first char of any kind from the Pacific. Pretty sweet to find them here as well. I followed it up with a tiny rainbow and then the small one you see photographed above.

The stream had a lot of elevation gain in this section so there was quite a bit of fast water with intermittent pools and long runs. It was very productive water – a lot of fun to fish. The rainbows were gorgeous – and yes, they did remind me of the wild rainbows we have in North Georgia. These rainbows had more black pepper sprinkles on them though.

We fished dry dropper rigs and ended up catching a few more Dolly Varden on nymphs as we made our way upstream, but rainbow trout were definitely the predominate species on both flies. It was a great river to end our trip on – such a beautiful place to fish.

The Olympics were a great destination to go bluelining. I may have to make it back up to do some steelhead or salmon fishing in the future. Not enough time to do it all, and we barely scratched the surface of the Olympic Peninsula. We were able to catch a few different species on our trip and I got to see another part of our great country that I hadn’t before. I’m slowly checking off states and species in the Western Native Trout Challenge. The WNTC has taken me to some awesome places that I likely would not have visited, or at least fished, had it not been a thing. I’m glad we gave the Wyoming Cutt Slam a shot so many year’s ago, it’s been a lot of fun participating in the many other slams and challenges we’ve come across as states and organizations realize how much fun these programs are, and how important they are to the education and conservation of native fish species across the country.

Olympic Peninsula August 2025 – Day 2

May 19, 2026
Adventure, Coldwater, Exploring, Fishing, Fly Fishing, Freshwater, Multimedia, Outdoors, Saltwater, Scouting, Travel, Video, Wade Fishing
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We headed out the next morning to a more remote location in the Olympic National Forest for another shot at coastal cutthroat trout. It was pretty cool to experience an early morning walk through a foggy temperate forest as we made our way upstream to where we wanted to start fishing. The stream was small, not as tight as the one from the day prior, but it still had that North Georgia feel to it. I hate to keep making comparisons of the Olympic peninsula to the southern Appalachians, but there were a lot of similarities to me – at least in the part of the peninsula we had been fishing. Both probably receive a similar amount of annual rainfall.

Throwing a trude style dry fly I was able to pick up a few small trout pretty early on. Much like yesterday, my first couple of fish didn’t really look that different from a lot of wild rainbows I’ve caught in the past. The one you see above was my third and it had a distinctive orange slash under it’s throat – this one I knew was a coastal cutthroat.

The creek we were on was full of timber – which is awesome for native trout. I’ve actually worked on some aerial photography projects for work in the last few years where folks are assessing the amount of timber they have in their rivers from the imagery we are providing them. It was pretty cool to see that in action – albeit in a different watershed entirely, but the same state at least.

The creek was a pretty cool, some spots were too narrow to really fish effectively due to the overgrowth, other spots were wider and we could fish those pretty well. There wasn’t a ton of room for a backcast on any stretch, but a backcast is generally unnecessary on small streams like this. The moss that covered everything was awesome – really gave it that Dagobah feel, lol. There are tons of interesting things you come across when you fish new environments – the little bubble ring that rotated in perpetuity was certainly one of them.

Coastal cutthroat were caught – mission accomplished – and the scenery was top notch. We were catching enough fish to keep us fishing, but I wouldn’t say the fishing was light’s out. Eventually we made it to a section of stream where the devil’s club kind of took over and was going to make wading through or walking around quite the adventure, so we opted to head back to the car and break for lunch. We had lunch at a cool little burger joint, Fat Smitty’s, in Discovery Bay – it may have been cash only – I don’t remember exactly, but the burger and shake hit the spot after a morning on the water.

After the burger I felt like we should probably give the sea-run version of coastal cutthroat a try, that’s one thing that makes coastal cutthroat so unique, their ability to occupy multiple habitat types, so we headed towards a beach access. Theoretically, this also put salmon in play for us – which was an exciting thought. This was actually a year where pink salmon were in Puget Sound and the Hood Canal, so there was an outside chance we run into one. Apparently they are only in every other year. I picked a beach where I knew the tide would be moving – it was more of a pass than open water. When we arrived the water was moving alright – it was probably moving a little too fast for us to fish it effectively. There was lots of debris being pulled through the area, especially sea grass, so it wasn’t the easiest place to fish. We gave it the ole college try though and thankfully I was able to avoid the skunk and caught a few a Pacific staghorn sculpin – at least that’s what I think they are, I could be wrong. No luck on the cutthroat or salmon front however.

No luck at this spot and no confidence that we even knew how to pick a good beach, so we called it a day and headed back to camp. I would be remiss if we had not given it a shot, but I also knew that PNW beach fishing wasn’t really what we went up there for. It was cool to give it a try though and I liked being able to make the comparison to the beach fishing we have on the Gulf coast for our version of sea trout. Just like the streams, different, but the same…..if that makes any sense.

Northern Idaho – Day 3 – Bluelining

October 24, 2022
Adventure, Coldwater, Exploring, Fish, Fishing, Fly Fishing, Freshwater, Hiking, Outdoors, Scouting, Travel, Wade Fishing
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I am a fool for small streams. I love them. I can’t get enough of them. I’ve got to fish them whenever I get a chance. So of course I had a day planned on a tributary to the river system we were staying on and day 3 was that day. The idea here being that the tributary may be colder than the main stem of the river and perhaps we’d have a better opportunity at a bull trout there due to it being a sort of thermal refuge for the juveniles. I would have been ecstatic catching a bull trout of any size on this trip.

An empty parking lot is always a welcome sight on any of my fishing trips and, expectedly, that was the scene when we pulled up to the trailhead that morning. The idea was to hike up a ways before we hit the creek and that’s what happened, but I cut my hike off much shorter than I expected to after I came across the hole pictured above right off the trail. I had visions of big bull trout sitting under all that timber, but I was only able to pull two small cutts out of that spot. Unfazed, I continued fishing my way upstream from there.

Fish were on the smaller size to start as Blake and I played a loose form of fisherman’s hopscotch working our way upstream. Fish size, for me, increased as we kept moving on up. I began the day fishing an oversized dry-dropper and had several fish just nose the dry. Downsizing resulted in far more committed strikes and hooked up fish on both flies.

At some point after my next fish I would lose my net. I don’t keep it on a zinger, just tucked behind me into my waist pack, so I’m not sure if an overhanging branch snatched or if I just left it on a rock after netting that last fish. Either way, I didn’t have it for the rest of the trip and probably need to ask for a replacement for Christmas (hint, hint to whomever wants to make that happen).

No matter the trip, there are always the “fish that got away” stories and mine happened just upstream of the big rock in the pic above. The creek had split and I opted to fish the side with less water as I could see there was a big tree laying down in the creek making a deep pool, ideal habitat in a place like this. I cast my dry as far up and as close to the tree as I could get and sure enough a monster fish came out in a flash to eat it and instinctively I set the hook far too quickly and pulled that fly away from the fish too soon. I never got a hook in him, but he never gave me another shot either as every subsequent drift came up empty. It looked like it could have been bigger than the big cutthroat I caught the day prior, but we’ll never know and because of that it will probably keep growing.

We ended our blueline day trip at the nice hole that Blake pulled his fish he’s pictured with from. Blake caught a few in that spot and I managed one there as well after catching a couple of nice cutts in the runs leading up to it. Unfortunately we didn’t come across any bull trout in this stream. Maybe they were higher up or maybe we just didn’t throw the right flies, I don’t have any experience with them so I don’t know. After busting my leg earlier in the day while wading I was just happy there was a trail running alongside the creek that we could take back down.

Wading can be dangerous and I had a scary moment earlier in the day. I was trying to work my way up above a rock ledge from one pool to the next and I took a step in the wrong spot and had my leg punch threw some loose rock and settle much further down than I anticipated. I was briefly stuck with my leg lodged in the rocks and I had to holler at Blake for a hand. Once I handed off my rod and backpack I could focus on pivoting my foot to the right angle that I needed to slip it out. It came out once I applied enough force. I’ve been wading for a long time and that was a first. My shin was bloody and would stay that way the rest of the day. I applied bactroban later back at camp, but had I been taking my time I could have avoided being in that situation altogether.