Methow River Opening

The Methow River opened May 23.  High and dirty water from run-off has plagued us since the opening.  The big contributor to the run-off has been unseasonable rains combined with the fire damaged tributary drainages.  Put these two conditions together and you get flash flooding and abnormal flows from tributaries dumping into the Methow.  Most of the snow is gone and has been for sometime.  In a normal year, however, we would have water flows in excess of 12,000 cfs., and run-off extending into the first part of July.  This year we have not seen any flows much over 6,000 cfs., and this is highly unusual.  The big concern here on the Methow, as on other rivers throughout the west, how much water will we have come August and September and on into to steelhead season from October through March.  The river is on the drop early, and we have went from just over 6,000 cfs. into the mid 4,000 range in just days.  If the rains that we have been experiencing let up, the drop should continue.

We have been on the river three times already, and that folks is very unusual.  In a normal year, we would not start fishing it consistently until late June to mid-July.  Clint and I floated and fished it yesterday, June 3, 2015, and we caught fish.  We did a short float from about 3 miles above the little town of Carlton into the take-out known as the Carlton Hole.  We threw streamers, nymphs, and even a big dry fly for a while.  The conditions on this particular day were cloud cover with temperatures in the 70’s - no wind.  We actually saw a quite a few mayflies coming off and an occasional caddis, but in reality it was more of a mayfly kind of day.  Zero fish on the surface eating, however; that is not unusual for the Methow.   We landed a Rocky Mountain White Fish, a decent Cutthroat, and a good Bull Trout plus we missed or Long Distance Released (LDR’d) 2 or 3 others.  I am embarrassed to say, that I actually broke one off on a swung streamer.  He took the streamer; I came up a bit to hard as he was headed in the opposite direction.  It felt like a heavy fish.  So much for 3X Fluorocarbon when swinging the Methow for trout.  Think I will resort to steelhead tactics.  The whitefish and the cutthroat were taken on a standard nymph rig with a bobber.

Here are the specifics:  The dry fly set-up was a no brainer.  I have had a fair amount of success on this river with big foam dries even when I see bugs such as mayflies and caddis coming off.  These cutthroat are opportunistic and will eat the "FULL MEAL DEAL" especially when other insects are present.  So, we were fishing a sz. 8 foam chernobyl pattern in the seams and on the edges.   The nymph rig was a standard two fly set-up.  We were fishing about 5 feet below the bobber with a Pat’s Stone and a bead head dropper; changing the dropper from time to time to give the fish different looks.  The bead heads were such things as PT’s, Princes, Lightning Bugs, etc.  The fish caught on the nymphs were on the droppers.  As for swinging the streamer, I am a fan of Sculpzillas on the Methow so that is what I was swinging.  With both the nymphs and streamers, we were concentrating on the slow insides and seam.  My set-up included a 11’7" Meiser 5-6-7 Highlander with an AirFlo 6wt. Streamer Switch Line  @ 420 grains.  To the end of that I had a 10’ Super Fast Sinking AirFlo Poly Leader.  Yep, I am a consistent user of AirFlo.  And I have to say that I have used their Streamer Switch a couple of times now on this rod;  it is great.  I especially like the integrated running line feature.  I like the loop free connection when stripping and fishing the fly, plus it casts nice.  I even think that I will be fishing it here on the Methow and Okanogan come steelhead swinging time.  Funny how what goes around - comes around.  I fished this set-up from my boat.  I didn’t feel like putting on waders.  My jeans and cowboy boots worked just fine.

All in all Clint and I had a great afternoon.  A couple of good fish to the boat and some great companionship.  It has been awhile since we have gotten to fish together.  I had forgotten how handy he is with a fly rod.  The fishing is always awesome, but I am confident that it and the "catching" is only going to get better as the river continues to drop and come into shape.  And it is on that course right now.