On Friday I Fished the teanaway down by the mouth were the river enters the yak and fishing was decent with the lower holes all to myself. I messed around mostly with drys as they are the most fun on a tenkara rod. By Saturday the thunder storms blew in and the north fork of the river became muddy and blew out the main river on sunday. Oddly enough the middle fork & west fork both remained clear thru sunday
I fished the middle fork of the Teanaway with a tenkara rod the previous week. The water looked fishy, but only managed a couple of dinks. I suspect you have to get further away from the road -- I tried, but the trail seemed to head higher and higher up from the stream. Was perfect Tenkara water -- only if there were more fish (or if I knew how to tempt them )
I'm a little puzzled at the size of the fish in the Teanaway above the forks. I've fished quite a ways from the roads and camps but I've only managed one or two 10"+ fish. The rest have been 7" or less. I think it needs to go to 100% catch and release or set the min size to something above 8".
I've only managed a few fish in the 14" range on the Teanaway main channel and forks. Fished them quite a bit for a couple seasons there. Mostly small fish in my experience, but tons of them, unless right down near the mouth, and I just consider those fish Yakima bows that are extending their feeding by a few hundred yards.
I usually always go with soft hackles on my Tenkara instead of dries because I can always present it in a dry or wet situation depending on how or where I place it on the water. I use plunges to get it deeper when I need to; and lightly drop it on the film to imitate dry. 90% of my presentation is swinging with twitches and a slow rod tip lift at the end. You are correct in saying that dries are the most fun, but heck any action is more fun than a skunk.
I always replace "tenkara" with the word dick when I read it, and this is the first time that it actually made a post kind of funny
North fork was so muddy because there was a big washout at the logging operation near Camp Wahoo when the rains really came hard on Saturday.
The Teanaway is all catch and release.....at least thats what I tell the tourists! If you don't read the regs...thats the answer. catch and release, single barbless hook. try it, most people just say, "thanks" or "good to know". But for us, yes we need to change that, the north fork is catch and release, but the main stem is not. lots of yakima fish get BBQ'ed in the lower section. word around town is the tribe is fixin to dump hatchery steelhead in the Teanaway....or has already....
I believe it had much more water historically. All those irrigated hay fields suck it almost dry in late summer and fall.
WDFW did some wild vs. hatchery interaction studies about a decade or so ago by releasing hatchery steelhead smolts in the Teanaway and observing different ecological behaviors between the two. I have not heard of any hatchery releases proposed for the Teanaway in the future.
Correct, BDD. Starting page 102 of this report: https://pisces.bpa.gov/release/documents/documentviewer.aspx?doc=01483-2
