Kia with a nice cutthroat
After a whole bunch of fits and starts, the Dolly fishing is finally jamming. The DIPAC hatchery salmon fry have spread out nicely so there is plenty of feed in the water but not so much that you are foul hooking them every cast.
Larger bait fish patterns are now working well as the salmon fry are quite big and the Dollies have been opportunistically eating herring as well. Some very nice Dollies have been caught on flies that are 4 inches in length! Stinger Clousers in Olive/White and Gray/White are especially good for this type of situation. Clouser Minnows we typically use for coho in #2 are also worth having along. Black/White, Pink/White, Chartreuse/White, All White and Baby Smallmouth are excellent colors if you want to throw a change up at them.
Sheep Creek has been fishing quite well and has also produced some bruiser fish. The beach by the whale statue is consistently fishing well as is Salmon Creek. Out the road, if you are willing to walk a bit, the tidewater area of Cowee Creek or the sand spit at Echo are also quite good. The streams are still pretty slow as most of the Dollies are at the creek mouths or in the saltwater. But a few cutthroat are showing themselves and a Dolly here and there. The freshwater fishing will pick up in mid to late June.
Mike working a sweet pool.
As we get ready to roll the calendar over into June it is just about time to get ready for sockeye fishing at Windfall Creek. Once again it is open for the month of June on Wednesdays and Saturdays. So next Wednesday June 5th will be the opener. It is always hard to predict if there will be sockeye in the river this early but the only way to find out is to go take a look! We'll get more into prime sockeye flies in next week's report.
We'd be remiss if we didn't mention that several king salmon have been incidentally hooked by Dolly anglers in the last 10 days. Needless to say the fight didn't last long but it was exciting! So if you see a big roller in the channel you know what it is. King fishing in the terminal area will open on June 15.
Happy fishing and see you on the water.
