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SRC in river help

1K views 18 replies 12 participants last post by  Old Man 
#1 ·
once the rivers cool and rise a bit I am wanting to try my hand at going after these beautiful fish. I have read a lot of posts on this forum about the use of a reverse spider. I have purchased a few and tied a few in different colors so I have that set. My question is technique and line choice. Are they best fished with a floating or sink tip? Also is a strip retrieve, swung or dead drifted presentation typically best. I have caught them before a long time ago swinging egg patterns while coho fishing but it was incidental and by no means a regular occurrence. I would be fishing from my raft between coho holes. Any ideas would be much appreciated.
 
#2 ·
Mike developed a pump and strip technique for fishing his reversed spiders. Lift the tip of the rod about 3 inches, as you lower the rod you strip in the slack, lift strip lift strip causing a pumping motion to the fly. It took me a while to get it but once I did I haven't looked back. I use a floating line but tips can be used, the faster you can do it the better the results. Only try to move the fly 2-3 inches at a pump and don't stop if you see that lunker following it. Works for cutties, Steel, cohos, pinks, have fun it's the only way I fish for cutthroat.
 
#6 ·
SRC are easy fish to catch on the fly. Likely one of the most fly friendly fish there is. Very aggressive which may explain the reason a lot of cutthroat flies are brightly colored affairs. Once the fly is spotted cutthroat will attack with such abandon they at times launch themselves out of the water. The trick to cutts in the river is finding them. They seem to like soft flowing water from a few feet deep to as deep as ten or twelve feet and loaded with stumps, snags, fallen trees and any other woody fly eating debris. If you are not losing flies on snags you are not effectively fishing for cutthroat. Tie up lots of flies. My favorite is simple spiders of various colors. Once you find one cutt you will have likely found several. If you hook a fish work the area well. There will be more. Rest the water if a commotion was made with the first or second fish.
 
#7 ·
I don't know the situation for SRC rivers in Washington but this is what we do in Oregon.

If we fishing the tidewater area or just above it, we look for overhanging foliage and fall downs from the bank. Basically, we're looking for LMB looking water. When we're fishing from boats, we cast directly under the foliage or right next to the logs. We use sink-tip lines and almost always, two flies. Once we've made a cast as close to shore as possible, we start stripping like crazy. The SRC will hit the patterns after only a few seconds of sinking and stripping.

The patterns we use are basically attractor patterns and Muddler Minnows.

The patterns that work best for me when fishing the lower river for SRC are: Purple Joe (my favorite), Spruce Fly, Borden Special (created by Bob Borden to fish for SRC in the Siletz River near tidewater), Royal Coachman Streamer (sometimes a pink floss middle for the body works better than red), Caballero, Purple WB, Pink WB and a Muddler Minnow. Yellow patterns and spiders don't work all that great for me where I fish the lower rivers for SRC. Pink and purple seem the colors the SRC like in these parts.

If we're not in boats but have hiked upstream, we use different tactics... this is especially true if we find spawning salmon.

Like I said, I don't know if the approach we use in Oregon will work in Washington but that's how we do things down here.
 
#8 ·
As the season progresses, don't rule out small offerings such as BWO's.
They can be great on cloudy, rainy days.
A lot of folks don't nymph for searuns, but a Copper John or Lightning Bug both have lead to banner days for me.
As far as colors go, yellow, red, orange and black all work well both on the surface and subsurface.
A good old bead head bugger or soft hackle tied in the above colors will produce as well.
Good luck,
SF
 
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#9 ·
Cutts are ambush predators. Find wood, seams into pools, salmon moving upriver (there are a couple just behind them), tailouts behind spawning salmon, and every beach in the salt with gravel or bigger rocks that has current..

Skating a light coloured (white or cream), barred (one or two grizzly hackle feathers in the tail), muddler is my favorite way to fish for them
 
#16 ·
The key to river fishing for sea-run cutthroat is locating them. Normally, their preference is for moderately slow-moving water with an abundance of cover in the form of snags, root wads, large rocks and overhanging branches. Sometimes even very slow-moving water (frog water) can be productive. During the late summer and fall they can sometimes be found moving into areas immediately below the mouths of small creeks in search of cooler and more highly-oxygenated water but normally it is advisable to concentrate on the pools. Floating the river allows much more water to be covered and at that time of the year a raft is preferable to a hard boat, being much easier to drag over the "bony" spots.

For many years my line of choice was a floater and it works well with Reverse and Knudson Spiders as well, and simplifies switching to a dry fly when that seems advisable. Blue-winged olive (Baetis) mayflies can be particularly attractive when large hatches begin later in the season, and Drunella flavilinia (the Lesser Green Drake) hatches throughout the late summer and into fall. October Caddis pupae and adults, and craneflies can also elicit a lot of interest from the cutthroat. A full-sink line can be useful when fishing deeper holes and works particularly well to roll a sculpin pattern along the bottom.

Larger streams (those with normal minimum summer flows of more than 1100 cfs) can host runs of cutthroat beginning as early as mid-July while, in those with flows of 750 cfs or less and flowing directly into marine waters, cutthroat may not begin to enter until December or even later. These small streams (typical of south Sound and Hood Canal streams) thus allow an almost year-round saltwater fishery for sea-run cutthroat. What this year's catastrophically low flows and high temperatures will mean for run timing and survival remains anyone's guess. For myself I have opted not to fish the rivers (those that have remained open) until cooler temperatures and higher flows return (if that happens at all this year).
 
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