SF Snoqualmie Rpt

Steve, nice report and glad you got out in what I thought seemed like a balmy day here locally. I did not know that elk critiqued casting, I'll try to avoid them. Bad enough I find otters everwhere that fuss and moan that I'm hooking fish for them to steal all too infrequently. Sorry about the retinal image implanting from the guy sunning himself. Ed

SteveO2 said:

Hit the SF Snoqualmie yesterday. Don't know if it was the humidity or my own ineptness, but fishing was slooooooow!

Hiking back to the truck across a gravel bar I came upon a sunbather with only a t-shirt over his face. (Didn't need that!)

Steve

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I can't speak to you ineptness, but I am going to go out on a limb here and say the fish were not affected by the humidity. They prefer 100% humidity and tend to bite less when their environment becomes drier.

I am sorry you had to view an improper display of the meat rod on the river, never a good sight. I am clearly gender biased and also much prefer 1-2 weights over the big 10 weight mamas!

I hit another Snoqualmie Fork on Saturday afternoon for a few hours and landed 12, largest 10". Great day out there and the fall colors are definitely showin' face. The Trusty Royal Wulff did the trick like always.

Ah, the sights you see when you are fishing. I'll stop here on that.

Split Bamboo said:

I can't speak to you ineptness, but I am going to go out on a limb here and say the fish were not affected by the humidity. They prefer 100% humidity and tend to bite less when their environment becomes drier.

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Well, I guess the elk were right! I hate critics.

Steve

I was on the SF Stilly in late august. I hiked down quite a ways with my buddy. I was tying on a fly when i looked up there was three dudes all butt naked walking up the beach on the far side. When my buddy and i stopped laughing, we were still wanting to hike down around the corner. But we had to cross the river to the side by the "nudes". When we got to the other side we looked by the beach and there was like 50 more of them!!!! Has anyone else walked into this on this river or another river?

Jake

SteveO2 said:

Hit the SF Snoqualmie yesterday. Don't know if it was the humidity or my own ineptness, but fishing was slooooooow!

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I just got back within the hour from a full day in the SF Snoq and it was the slowest day of fishing I have ever had on any of the forks. I landed 4 and my friend landed 2. Normally it's 30+ and non-stop action, and this is a section of the river I know well and always slay 'em on. Strange.

No naked people or elk around though. Pretty quiet on that front.

Lugan-

I had the same thing happen last weekend. A section I know every slot and always get more than I can bother counting. I worked hard for a single fish.

So this weekend I went steelheading instead. Hell, if I'm going to get skunked, I might as well be getting skunked by something big. Another angler floating the same stretch of the Sky did run into a naked guy just above Ben Howard though...

T.

How have you guys found the flows?

I don't usually fish the SF higher than 200cfs. Two weekends back when I fished it was in a dip between rain events and the flows were great, about 120cfs. Nice partly cloudy weather and I thought I was going to be pulling in little trout after little trout. Nada, one nice 13" on a soft hackle right off the bat then I didn't even see another (live) fish for 4 hours covering about 2 miles of river. I did see two half-eaten cutts floating by.

T.

I don't get it. These are starving little fish due to the sterility of this and similar west slope Cascades streams. They're almost all skinny with big heads and short thin bodies. Logic would say that they'd eat whenever presented with a reasonably realistic offering as long as water flows aren't too high. This would logically be especially true in September with a long winter of high flows and cold water right around the corner.

Any professional (or expert amateur) fish biologists have an idea why these fish could develop lockjaw so thoroughly at this time of year?

Stew, flow was around 120cfs for me yesterday, which is confortably low though higher than the very lowest flows after a long dry summer. I fish the SF Snoq from about 250cfs down.

I was wondering the same thing. Mid-Sept to Mid-Oct has been the best fishing for me on the Forks the last couple years. Last week I was just scratching my head and wondering "WTF...?". There were a fair number of bugs (for the SF), some small mayflies, quite a few little yellow sallies nd the off caddis. Haven't seen an October Caddis yet this year on the Forks.

I kept on hiking thinking, "the next pool/run will be back to normal..." and ending up getting a lot of exercise but no fish.

They all migrate through limestone aquifers to rattlesnake lake. That's why RSL is off the charts right now. I know I should have never told this unbelievable secret - and there will undoubtedly be a lot of protective neighsayers, but THIS IS THE TRUTH!

JesseCFowl said:

They all migrate through limestone aquifers to rattlesnake lake. That's why RSL is off the charts right now. I know I should have never told this unbelievable secret - and there will undoubtedly be a lot of protective neighsayers, but THIS IS THE TRUTH!

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:beathead::beathead::beathead: WTF LOL

Shhhh, Jesse, shhhhhhhh.

Limestone, eh? Do we also have secret chalk streams in the area?

SteveO2 said:

Hiking back to the truck across a gravel bar I came upon a sunbather with only a t-shirt over his face. (Didn't need that!)

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Nice meeting you too, Steve.

Lugan said:

I don't get it. These are starving little fish due to the sterility of this and similar west slope Cascades streams. They're almost all skinny with big heads and short thin bodies. Logic would say that they'd eat whenever presented with a reasonably realistic offering as long as water flows aren't too high. This would logically be especially true in September with a long winter of high flows and cold water right around the corner.

Any professional (or expert amateur) fish biologists have an idea why these fish could develop lockjaw so thoroughly at this time of year?

Stew, flow was around 120cfs for me yesterday, which is confortably low though higher than the very lowest flows after a long dry summer. I fish the SF Snoq from about 250cfs down.

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FLows were good then. I have fished it as high as 470 before ... when I was in dire need of a fishing fix.

Stew

SteveO2 said:

.... only a couple of dinks.

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......only one was a fish. The other belonged to the sunbather!

Any professional (or expert amateur) fish biologists have an idea why these fish could develop lockjaw so thoroughly at this time of year?

Um, someone posted a thread about catching a 20" fish there last week.....my vote.