(If this sounds more like an "article" than a fishing report, that's cause I posted this on my blog a week ago. I've culled it down a bit and save you the hardship of reading the uber long-winded version)
The grasshopper invasion of 2010 was predicted to be of Biblical proportions. Several news sources posted articles of the impending doom, and it appeared that Washington was not safe from the perils facing other states from the Dakotas through Wyoming, Montana, Idaho and Oregon. Do a search for “grasshopper invasion 2010” and you’ll be amazed at the (hype) predictions.
The hopper invasion had farmers grimacing and anglers grinning from ear to ear. I certainly wish no ill upon the good folk who work the land, but hopper fishing in the mid to late summer is always a grand time on rivers such as the Yakima. Tossing large bushy imitations that look somewhat like a grasshopper tight to the banks is something I look forward to every year. The fish are seeking protected shelter from the high summer flows so they don’t really want to move more than an inch or so to eat. Casts must therefore be right on the bank. Not six inches out from the bank, but literally ON the bank. If you can bounce the fly off a blade of grass or twig of some shrubbery and have it flop gently into the water within an inch of the bank, chances are an opportunistic trout will grab the offering as it falls on their nose.
As daunting as the predictions were, the hopper invasion evaded me on two consecutive outings on the Yakima this summer during what should have been prime hopper time. On one outing we saw a lone grasshopper. On the next trip we saw not a one. Fishing hopper patterns did not prove overly effective either, so apparently the fish weren’t looking for that particular foodstuff. Maybe they new that it was all just hype.
Try as we might neither Jimmy nor I could find a third person willing to share time on the oars with us (even Mumbles blew us off), so the two of us headed east on I-90. We launched Jimmy’s Hyde at Big Horn and began our afternoon float toward Roza. The great flip flop was already underway and high summer flows were already dropping. Lowering water means feeding fish, and we were stoked to hit the river. The plan was to pound the banks with big bugs all day and once the sun dropped behind the canyon walls we’d be on some slow water for the evening caddis action.
The hoppers were, again, curiously absent. The w#nd, however, was not. It blew in our faces and at our backs, but w#nd is something one just learns to deal with, and except for a few gusts that blew our hats off and rattled our fly boxes, it wasn’t as bad as it could have been (not like the day before when it was reportedly blowing 40 mph). I fished a golden stone dry for most of the day before switching to something smaller and tan-colored later on. Jimmy fished mostly a variation of tan foam ant. He did try a Chernobyl hopper for a spell, but it yielded no results.
Other than the few late season rubber hatches the river wasn’t very busy. We leap-frogged with 4 other boats all day but there was plenty of room in all the good water to drop anchor and ply the likely haunts with our dry fly offerings. We saw a couple anglers fishing with strike indicators but we refused on this day to fish anything but a dry.
Catching was actually better than what I typically encounter on the Yakima: Jimmy landed a half dozen fish in the 8-10 inch range and nearly landed a 15 inch trout that showed all the gumption of a spawned-out, half-rotten salmon. Yours truly landed a handful of rather unimpressive fish in the similar size range of 8-10 inches. And a 9 inch Squawfish, which I released back into the waters to devour more juvenile salomonids.
The action turned up a notch during our last 45 minutes on the water as I hooked 3 fish and landed two of them. A strong fighting 15+ inch fish took line from my reel and jumped a couple of times before breaking off my 5X (at least my knots held). I’d liked to have landed that fish for sure, but it was fun just to feel a solid tug on the end of the line after many previous trips without that privilege.
We saw very few rising fish all day, and most of those hooked were done so several feet off the banks. The only fish we encountered that were hunkered tight to the banks were 2-4 inch troutlets, which came as no surprise given the dropping flows – the larger fish were moving into feeding lanes out from the banks as they do every year at this time. So everything was as it should have been.
Except for the hoppers. Where were the hoppers?
The grasshopper invasion of 2010 was predicted to be of Biblical proportions. Several news sources posted articles of the impending doom, and it appeared that Washington was not safe from the perils facing other states from the Dakotas through Wyoming, Montana, Idaho and Oregon. Do a search for “grasshopper invasion 2010” and you’ll be amazed at the (hype) predictions.
The hopper invasion had farmers grimacing and anglers grinning from ear to ear. I certainly wish no ill upon the good folk who work the land, but hopper fishing in the mid to late summer is always a grand time on rivers such as the Yakima. Tossing large bushy imitations that look somewhat like a grasshopper tight to the banks is something I look forward to every year. The fish are seeking protected shelter from the high summer flows so they don’t really want to move more than an inch or so to eat. Casts must therefore be right on the bank. Not six inches out from the bank, but literally ON the bank. If you can bounce the fly off a blade of grass or twig of some shrubbery and have it flop gently into the water within an inch of the bank, chances are an opportunistic trout will grab the offering as it falls on their nose.
As daunting as the predictions were, the hopper invasion evaded me on two consecutive outings on the Yakima this summer during what should have been prime hopper time. On one outing we saw a lone grasshopper. On the next trip we saw not a one. Fishing hopper patterns did not prove overly effective either, so apparently the fish weren’t looking for that particular foodstuff. Maybe they new that it was all just hype.
Try as we might neither Jimmy nor I could find a third person willing to share time on the oars with us (even Mumbles blew us off), so the two of us headed east on I-90. We launched Jimmy’s Hyde at Big Horn and began our afternoon float toward Roza. The great flip flop was already underway and high summer flows were already dropping. Lowering water means feeding fish, and we were stoked to hit the river. The plan was to pound the banks with big bugs all day and once the sun dropped behind the canyon walls we’d be on some slow water for the evening caddis action.
The hoppers were, again, curiously absent. The w#nd, however, was not. It blew in our faces and at our backs, but w#nd is something one just learns to deal with, and except for a few gusts that blew our hats off and rattled our fly boxes, it wasn’t as bad as it could have been (not like the day before when it was reportedly blowing 40 mph). I fished a golden stone dry for most of the day before switching to something smaller and tan-colored later on. Jimmy fished mostly a variation of tan foam ant. He did try a Chernobyl hopper for a spell, but it yielded no results.
Other than the few late season rubber hatches the river wasn’t very busy. We leap-frogged with 4 other boats all day but there was plenty of room in all the good water to drop anchor and ply the likely haunts with our dry fly offerings. We saw a couple anglers fishing with strike indicators but we refused on this day to fish anything but a dry.
Catching was actually better than what I typically encounter on the Yakima: Jimmy landed a half dozen fish in the 8-10 inch range and nearly landed a 15 inch trout that showed all the gumption of a spawned-out, half-rotten salmon. Yours truly landed a handful of rather unimpressive fish in the similar size range of 8-10 inches. And a 9 inch Squawfish, which I released back into the waters to devour more juvenile salomonids.
The action turned up a notch during our last 45 minutes on the water as I hooked 3 fish and landed two of them. A strong fighting 15+ inch fish took line from my reel and jumped a couple of times before breaking off my 5X (at least my knots held). I’d liked to have landed that fish for sure, but it was fun just to feel a solid tug on the end of the line after many previous trips without that privilege.
We saw very few rising fish all day, and most of those hooked were done so several feet off the banks. The only fish we encountered that were hunkered tight to the banks were 2-4 inch troutlets, which came as no surprise given the dropping flows – the larger fish were moving into feeding lanes out from the banks as they do every year at this time. So everything was as it should have been.
Except for the hoppers. Where were the hoppers?
