Drove over to Dash Point state park from the east side on Wednesday, stayed til Friday afternoon.
Thursday morning from the state park beach, things were dead (low tide to rising tide). did not see a single pink jump or surface. Several beach fisherpersons and a few boats were present, one boat caught 2 on gear, another boat caught one on a fly. Thursday afternoon I had a nice kayak up the coast.
Friday morning, fish were around at last (falling tide, low tide to rising tide). A single boat was present off the state park beach, it landed 6 fish from 8 to 8:45. A few beach anglers picked off an occasional fish. I caught one at 9:15 myself, which I photographed(see below), bled, gutted, packed with ice, and drove it home in the afternoon. This fish was delicious filleted with a ginger, horseradish, sake, bread crumb spread on it and broiled.
meanwhile, back at the beach, about 10 am loud whooping was heard from the dash point pier. someone later confirmed to me that they arrived at the pier at 10 am and it was hot.
It slowed down at the beach until about 11 when some more fish came through in the strong tidal current (rising tide). I realized I was casting behind them, so I moved southwest quickly to get in front, caught one, released it, hooked up on the next cast, LDR.
Gear: 7 wt, clear intermediate Airflo 40+ integrated shooting head. First fish on tungsten cone head fly dressed with the usual things, white arctic fox tail, krystal flash, and pink in maribou. Later fishes on a smaller copper bead head fly with pink marabou similar to Steve Savilles postings. The latter was way easier to cast, my tungsten cone may have been too heavy at a 1/4 inch size.
From two days of observations, i must say the gear guys in boats were outfishing the fly anglers by a considerable margin most of the time, and some of these folks clearly knew what they were doing and fished very purposefully. And it was not just a matter of being deeper, since one boat I saw on Thursday afternoon hooked up by moving closer to the shore and casting practically to the beach - into shallow water near shore, in other words. There could be a lesson here about fishing near the bottom and prospecting widely when fish are not showing at the surface. Only when the fish were coming in visible at the surface were the beach fly anglers doing as well or better.
In the photo below, the fish ruler is made from two folding 12 inch plastic rulers from Fred Meyer connected zero to zero with a split ring. This think crumples into a pocket, and only cost a few bucks for parts. Buck salmon has the start of a hump.
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