Bit of a delayed report as I got called down to Westport earlier than expected so my life has gotten incredibly busy pretty much over night...
On Saturday I fished the south sound with
@bart morrow yet again, and I'm not even sure I can write adequately enough to describe the day we had.
We knew it was going to be a good day when we were watching rezzies jump and rise all over the boat launch as we were putting the boat in the water. We then moved about 100' from the dock and I hooked up first cast. Now this is not often a great sign, but today it was just a sign of what would come. After I hooked that fish we realized that Bart's super nice long handled net was not in the boat, so we ran back to the dock and grabbed the little net I use from the beach. It certainly wasn't ideal, and it lead to some interesting netting moments, but it was certainly better than nothing.
I'll keep this short as I'm awfully tired, but we had an absolutely phenomenal day. We caught cutthroat and coho pretty much all day. The cutts came from all the likely looking spots, and the coho were spread all over the place from right up against shore to deep water rips. We caught some really nice cutts, biggest we've caught in the last month of fishing out of Bart's boat, and the coho were an extremely nice class of fish. We caught several that had to be pushing 20" if not over.
It was a beautiful day, warm, sunny, and not any wind to speak of. Of course this made the fish extremely selective.... We only caught fish on Delia Squids, bead chain Clousers, Les Johnson's Beach Fly, the "Cutthroat Linguini" as
@tackleman named the crazy rubber legged clouser I posted a week or so ago, the chartreuse/white "Crazy Clayton" I've been fishing so much lately, chum babies, Popsicle Sticks and several others I cant recall. Extremely selective they were.... If you didn't show them one of these patterns they just wouldn't eat
I fished the Chartreuse/White rubber legged clouser all day long, only changing when one fly finally had been eaten to shreds, but I just put on a new one of the same pattern. Justin, who came out with us, cycled through just about every fly in my box and caught fish on all of them. These fish were friggen hungy. There were large schools of chum fry spotted all day, as well as several large schools of sand lance which was awesome to see.
The last 2-3 hours of the day we cruised north to an area we hadn't been to yet, and found coho in shocking numbers crushing fry everywhere we looked. It was tough for Bart to control the boat because there was some ridiculous currents and the fish were on the inside soft water from this massive rip, but he did an excellent job of keeping us on the fish. We caught fish for the last 2-3 hours literally as fast as we could. We would cast into the massive feeding frenzy, hook a fish, and try to land it as quickly as we could just so we could catch another one. It was insane. I didn't realize it at the time but I got about halfway home and it hit me just how exhausted I was. The adrenaline rush of such hot fishing really took it out of me. These fish were pigs too. I was fishing my Meridian 6 wt and they would take it right to the cork. At one point I put as much pressure as I physically could on one fish, and it wouldn't friggen budge. They were amazingly strong.
It was just one of those perfect days where everything lines up... Amazing weather, fantastic company, and fishing beyond description. We had some awesome laughs.... Bart is so much fun to fish with, and is a very good captain. Justin caught a lot of fish as well, as soon as he stopped trout setting on every friggen fish
I'll leave this with pics from the day. Interesting moment of the day was the muscle bound guy who wandered around in his skivvies while the girl that was on the beach with him tried to catch some fish on the fly. We got a pretty good laugh out of this guy, especially considering that he was wearing some sort of capris leggings when we first saw him, before he decided to strip down as soon as I tried to snap a pic of him. Hilarious. Just never know what you'll see out there.
Thanks for a great trip Bart! I will gladly take your open seats anytime, but if anyone is on the fence when he posts during the summer and I'm out working and can't take him up on it, take my word for it and jump on it... You will NOT regret it.
Beautiful day!
This guy was quite the character
Massive rip. Fish were hugging the shore on the soft water side of this bad boy
Fish were jumping and splashing all around us. It was insane.
Some fish pics
