Blake and I took a trip last August up to the Olympic peninsula in Washington. We weren’t in search of steelhead, or salmon, but rather coastal cutthroat trout. Obviously, a salmon, or steelhead, would have been pretty badass to catch, but I really just wanted to experience fishing a temperate rainforest – or at least on the fringes of one – and catch the oldest form of cutthroat trout. I’m also not interested in taking trips to not catch fish, so steelhead aren’t high on the priority list as of right now.

We got a pretty good look at Mt. Rainier on the flight into Seattle – this was my first time going to Seattle so this was a pretty cool site to see from the plane – a dormant volcano rising above the clouds. We picked up our Turo rental and headed to Gig Harbor – where we had lunch and made a stop at Gig Harbor Fly Shop. The young guy working was nice and as helpful as he could be being that they weren’t located on the Olympic peninsula so he didn’t get that way too often. The big takeaway for us was that he made it sounds like catching resident coastal cutthroat wouldn’t be too hard so long as we were on streams that had them. This is pretty much how it goes with native blueline fish everywhere, which is one reason I like them so much, they’re always hungry and generally not that picky. Lunch was good too and Gig Harbor was a cool little seaside town, but we weren’t staying long as we wanted to set up camp and try and get out and fish before it got dark.

For this trip we decided to set up camp in one spot and just venture out from there. Our home base for the trip was Sequim Bay State Park. I picked that spot because I figured camping in the rainshadow part of the Olympic peninsula was probably a good idea and we weren’t that far from streams on the northern and eastern side of the peninsula. I was a little worried that being so close to the highway we’d hear road noise all night, but that wasn’t an issue at all. It was a beautiful little park, right on Sequim Bay, and ended up being a great spot for the whole trip. After we set up camp we set out for the Olympic NF to get some time on the water that evening.

I’m so used to having to go high in elevation to fish for trout that these Olympic peninsula trout were throwing me off in my planning because that wasn’t the case here. We didn’t need to go high in elevation as they also live in the estuaries – they’re found throughout the entire system. That’s a wild concept to someone from the south, lol. So we drove into the national forest and headed for a creek we were told had them, parked at the first spot I could find, then hiked down to the creek. In hindsight I may have wanted to be a bit more discerning when it came to parking spots, as there was a small RV parked in a spot much further ahead, but I was eager to fish, and wasn’t sure the parking/hike-in situation further up. One would think seeing a burned out car right when you cross the forest service boundary would be a deterrent, but man I was itching to get on the water!

When we made it down to the creek it was pretty clear this was going to be some tight, technical fishing. The water was pretty low and clear as well. This seems like pretty typical late summer conditions in any mountain range. Honestly the creek didn’t seem that different than those you fish in North Georgia, so I really didn’t feel too out of place here. The forest felt different though – the plants were certainly different than what you’d see down south. The forest floor was porous too – bushwhacking in meant stepping through the ground in places – that’s how much organic material was on the ground, kinda wild stuff.

I caught a little trout pretty early on, that I think was a coastal cuttroat, then followed it up with a slightly bigger fish, but I honestly couldn’t tell you if it was a pure coastal cutt, or if there was some rainbow trout genetics here. I followed that up with another small salmonid that I honestly don’t know what it was – I’m just realizing this now as I’m looking back at the pictures, lol. There were lots of little fish here, but catching something is always better than catching nothing, so I was pretty happy about fish rising to take dries.

The stream elevation started to increase and with that the waterfall/pool complexes did as well, but we made it to a section of the creek that just really weirded us out. We started noticing a bunch of homemade shelters on the side of the hill and there were some obviously well worn paths around this part of the creek. I even found a stash of supplies. I was guessing we had made it below where the RV was parked. Seeing as how it was getting late anyway and we weren’t really interested in making new friends with anyone who may call this spot home, we decided to hike out. The easiest route out would take us right up to where the RV was parked, which in hindsight probably wasn’t very smart on our part, but thankfully no one was outside. As we passed Blake pointed out the Narcan packaging sitting out on their camp table ready to be put to use! It really did feel a lot like North Georgia up here after all, lol.

We caught some fish and made it back to the campsite without issue – so first day was a success. Tomorrow we’d try to catch some “no doubter” resident coastal cutts, hopefully a little bit farther away from civilization.