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Fly-fishing the Yakima
The persistent get a payoff in rainbows
By GREG JOHNSTON
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER
The saying "chasing rainbows" is more fitting than the 75-mile stretch where the Yakima River tumbles out of mountain pine forests and cuts through a golden canyon on its way to the Columbia River.
It is appropriate literally and metaphorically, and this I know personally.
The Yakima is a classic western trout stream in every sense, a series of riffles and pools that hide rainbows fattened by a host of insects -- mayflies, stoneflies, caddisflies, grasshoppers -- and allow an exceedingly popular fly-fishery.
Despite facing significant problems, the river's fishery remains healthy, managed by the state as a quality wild rainbow fishery, open year-round. Anglers must release all trout between Easton and Roza dams and may use only artificial flies or lures with a single barbless hook.
And while a good angler can catch 30 or 40 trout during a prime insect hatch, larger rainbows in the Yakima -- broad-back brutes 16 to 22 inches -- are as elusive as the proverbial pot of gold.
"A lot of people get real frustrated with the Yakima," says Dennis Worley, a seasoned angler who works at Kaufmann's fly shop in Bellevue. "Your casts have to be real accurate and presented properly. You might not see the big ones, but they're there."
The big rainbows of the Yakima lurk and live under overhanging branches and partially submerged logs, in deep runs along grassy banks and at the bottom of seams in the current where boulders split the flow.
To coax them into rising for a dry fly, an angler must lay it in these precise spots cleanly, so slack line does not form downstream and drag the fly unnaturally. Further, the fly must closely resemble real bugs.
On a recent float with Worley through the beautiful Yakima Canyon, I managed to put more flies into the branches and grass, or stuck on logs and boulders, than in the lips of trout.
"The guides here will tell you, you get one chance" to cast the fly into the right spot, Worley says.
However, those caught or at least fooled into rising to the fly were beauties, enough so the intrigue outweighed the frustration. A week later, a friend and I returned to wade and explore the upper river near Cle Elum.
From the first hole we pulled a well-conditioned, leaping rainbow of 14 inches, a gorgeous specimen with black speckling along an iridescent bronze back, a slash of rose running along its sides from gill plate to tail.
We hooked trout in almost every hole for several hours, but they were small, from 4 to 11 inches. After lunch, a stiff wind roared down-stream from the mountains and the fish seemed to quit biting.
However, near the end of a day, we discovered a dream spot where a rock outcropping forced the river into a sharp left curve, its flow scouring out a deep, emerald pool.
The fish had not been rising to dry flies, so we had switched to nymphs, wet flies that imitate the pupal forms of insects. I cast one upstream, allowing it to sink and swing downstream in the current, then started stripping line from the reel and feeding it down the rod, hoping to bounce the nymph along the bottom.
Suddenly I felt a faint tug, raised the rod tip sharply and the reel whined in classic fashion, the nymph fast into the jaw of a weighty specimen that bolted across the pool.
For fully five minutes the fish alternated strong, steady runs in the current with lightning bursts upstream and deep, brooding dives along the rock outcropping.
Finally I eased the fish to within five feet and saw it was deep-bodied and fully the length of my forearm. I raised the rod high and reached for the line when suddenly the fish slipped the hook and vanished into the green depths.
Geoff McMichael is Department of Fish and Wildlife biologist in Ellensburg and since 1989 has studied the Yakima's rainbows. He is also a seasoned fly-fisherman who learned on the renowned trout streams of Idaho and later did his master's thesis on Montana's famous Madison River.
Some Yakima anglers claim the river holds rainbows that push 27 or 28 inches and 6 to 7 pounds. McMichael's data do not show that.
"A big fish in the Yakima is 18 inches," he says. "We've handled 10,000 to 15,000 in the last seven years and we've gotten two over 22 inches."
And while the Yakima is without question what anglers call a "blue-ribbon" trout stream -- the best in a state that has almost none -- it can't compare with the rich streams of the states to the east.
The Yakima averages 300 to 500 trout per kilometer, McMichael says, while the Madison, for example, averaged around 3,000 at its peak, before an ailment known as whirling disease decimated its rainbows.
"The Yakima is just not as fertile a system. It's nutrient base is lower." McMichael says. "And the Yakima is managed for irrigation flow, which seriously affects what it can produce."
The primary reason Washington has so few top-quality trout streams is because most of its rivers produce migratory fish such as salmon and steelhead trout, not mostly resident fish like inland streams. The Yakima, which drains a vast area of the central and southern Cascade Mountains, was also once primarily a salmon and steelhead stream. In 1853, George B. McLelland explored routes through the Cascades and encountered Indians near Kachess Lake spearing large numbers of salmon from log weirs.
Dams, built beginning in 1891, doomed the salmon runs. Spring chinook and steelhead -- which might explain the claims of huge rainbows -- are hanging on in the Yakima, with this year about 1,000 of the former and 50 of the latter returning.
In their absence, however, the rainbows have thrived.
Some old-timers maintain the river produced better fishing in the 1960s, when it was heavily planted by the state and a limit of 15 per day was allowed. But most anglers maintain the restrictive regulations, coupled with an end to planting in 1984, have resulted in a premier fishery for all-wild, naturally reproducing rainbows.
"We've got a lot more fish in the river and a lot more big fish," says Robert Cooper, who with his brother Charles runs Cooper's Fly Shop and Guide Service in Ellensburg. "There are a lot more fellows fishing the river, but that's fine. There's room."
Indeed, anglers can usually find an open spot in the river's mile after mile of trout water. But McMichael believes the number of anglers is limiting the number and size of the fish. "We've seen an enormous increase in anglers, several hundred percent since about 1991," he says. "Good fishermen, especially during spring or fall, can catch 30 to 40 fish per day. If they have an incidental hooking mortality of, say, 10 percent, it's like they're taking five fish."
But the biggest threat to Washington's premier river trout fishery might be the hatchery the federal government is building at Cle Elum. The Yakama Indian Nation has long sought a hatchery to restore the salmon runs that its ancestors relied on.
"We have mixed feelings, a lot of apprehension and a lot of hope," says Cooper at his shop. "History has shown us that hatchery fish are the downfall of wild fish. I think we should spend our dollars more on streamside enhancement and controlling thermal and chemical pollution. We're hoping for the best."
The study McMichael works on is examining potential hatchery impacts. Preliminary indications are that a sudden influx of hatchery steelhead could dramatically reduce rainbow production, but so far the studies have found no impact from spring chinook. "But don't construe that to say a lot more chinook aren't going to hurt the trout," McMichael says.
Current plans call for the hatchery to release chinook, beginning in 1998.
Right now, McMichael says, the Yakima River is "holding its own."
The two prime periods for fishing the Yakima are spring, when flows are highly variable but a wide variety of insect hatches provide excellent angling, and fall, from now to November. This is largely because of flows controlled by the federal Bureau of Reclamation. In winter, the bureau holds back flow to fill its reservoirs (Keechelus, Kachess and Cle Elum), and then releases the water in summer to irrigate farmlands.
This results in a flow pattern just the opposite of a free-flowing river. Summer flows are so high that shore fishing is almost impossible, although anglers in rafts and dories do well.
In early September the bureau brings flows down to levels that allow wading and bank fishing and also concentrate the fish in the deeper pools, pockets and runs.
Fishing the Yakima at this time is a sublime experience, particularly after the cottonwoods paint the riverbanks golden. Hatches of caddis, the mayfly Baetis and sometimes stoneflies provide excellent dry-fly angling. Nymphs are effective during all seasons and are important when no hatches are coming off, although dry-fly purists disdain the wet bugs.
The vast majority of anglers on the river cast flies, but gear-anglers using spinners and spoons also catch fish.
However, whatever method you fish the Yakima, bear in mind that you might spend more time chasing rainbows than catching them.
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