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No coho Stilly

4K views 36 replies 18 participants last post by  phuck this 
#1 ·
Anyone see any sign of a salmon in the lower Stilly? Was at the lower river at a couple of places that should have had fish but nothing. No cutts either. Had to cut short the fishing cuz right wader foot started leaking.
 
#8 ·
Regarding the coho -
Have been seeing a some rolling since early September. Information from around the sound would indicate that the coho return was earlier than normal this fall (example the Ballard lock counts). In addition my recollection is that in the last 6 weeks we have had 3 higher than normal flow events on the Stillaguamish. Suspect that the majority of the basin's coho have redistributed themselves making to the upstream move to nearer their natal streams.

Regarding the cutthroat -
I agree that numbers are below normal. However given the drastic drought in the fall of 2015 I expect to see fewer cutthroat. Especially hard hit would have been the 4 year-olds with a smaller hit on the 3 year-olds. Typically those age classes dominate the returns. One thing I have seen is a much higher than normal percentage of larger fish; maybe 4 times what I would normally see. That shewed ratio might indicate how poor the survival was for those juveniles that were in the streams during the drought.

Recall seeing similar missing year classes of cutthroat during the droughts of the late 1980s. Expect to see that void in the age structure to work its way through the older age classes with things slowly returning to more a normal age structure in the next few years.

Curt
 
#15 ·
Well I just got back. Lots of small aggressive fish but nothing large. Since this is a coho thread I will add that I did not see one sign that there were any coho around. Odd for this time of year. I caught one fish on a sculpin pattern that totally filled up the little guy's mouth. Kinda funny
 
#20 ·
Pretty common to see the cutts feeding on BWOs in the fall, especially in October. While the bugs can be pretty small at less initially a larger BWO in size 14 will be adequate though if the fish get fussy you may be force to go smaller to match the hatch. Can be great fun

Curt
 
#29 · (Edited)
Did not see any steelhead and haven't caught a hatchery steelhead on the Stilly yet this year.
Went out again today and had similar results as yesterday. Today I caught 2 rainbows that were pretty nice. One was probably 16" and super stout. Fought exceptionally hard. No huge cutties but a couple respectable ones.
Only saw one other fisherman today. A gentleman with three spinning rods, a pit bull, and a salmon net with a dead coho in it.

Organism Fish Marine biology Seafood Ray-finned fish
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Fish Marine biology Fin Ray-finned fish Electric blue
 
#31 ·
Hillbilly-
Love the cutthroat picture - a classic October fish! Have always enjoyed the wide range of coloration we find in the cutthroat this time of year.

Had to chuckle about OMJ's comment about the number of flies in Jamie's fly box. Just took a look at my go-to sea-run cutthroat box. After 4 days of fishing this week there are some holes in the box but by actual count there still are 126 flies in the box! In addition this time of year I often carry 3 additional smaller boxes of back flies. One with a few dries, one with some color variations of October caddis and one with 4 or 5 dozen of what I call finesse patterns.

Clearly I have a serious addiction! However my experience is that if not losing some flies my success is likely limited. In those 4 days of fishing I lost more than a dozen flies - flies in the limb I could not get under, on a log that I over casted to, in the tree that grabbed my back cast, one to the log a fish wrapped me around, and thankfully a couple that were just worn out by the fish they caught.

Curt
 
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