Post Upper River Float Update:

I didn’t get a chance to go live at the end of the day. Got a little windy and the fishing slowed and I just got a little tired.

We floated Hanson to Bristol. There is a bunch of new water to read in the upper. Side channels to pick apart, new logs and woody debris, complete restructuring of the river bottom and substrate, and a lot of new gravel bars, drops offs, and riffles.

The main stem river below the State/East Cle Elum Acces point is totally blocked by a new log jam in the S curve. So take the right side channel just below the access point a few hundred yards. It’s clear, and it’s fishy.

The water temp always plays a huge factor in the upper. It only got up to 52 for us today and that was at 6:30 at the take out. So fish were a little less interested. Bugs were also a little funky. Very sporadic, we had March Browns, Yellow Sallies, PMDs, I swear I saw 1 golden, and Caddis. We stuck it out after 5 to see if the caddis would pop but it just didn’t materialize. It tried. But that water and air temp just didn’t line up right.

All that being said, we had a great day. Both Ross and I got into several trout. I stopped counting after 12. I landed 3, and missed so many more…my reaction time is still in spring mode and these fish are at summer speeds. Ross did much better and landed a handful. Streamer fishing this morning was good for about 2 hours and we got into several fish, and so many tags. Lots of the smaller trout are out and they are super fun and a good warm up for when the big trout show up. We got into some nice fish on dries later in the day on a Royal PMX in a 10. One of my favorite attractor patterns. With how funky the hatches where we fished the fishy looking stuff and we got some lookers, some boopers, a few bippers, and some nice fat takes.

Don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t get into a bunch o’ trout in the upper river. I’ve done 75% of my trips in the upper since coming back to guiding here and I love the upper in the summer. Just superb dry fly fishing when things align and nymphing and streamer fishing are always fun, especially when the hatches come in regularly and you can start to break them down.

Fishing was good, weather was damn near perfect, and the Yakima is finally ready for anglers.

Looking forward to the next 5 months of awesome here on the homewater! Calendar is filling! Get on it and get after it anglers!