We hit the Skykomish at first light today. We fished the upper section and man was it hopping with fish! I'd say that it was 60/40 coho and chinook though, so it gave us a mixed bag.
We caught so many jack chinook it was ridiculous. The coho on the other hand were a bite more finicky, and we did hook one on a wee dick nite that shook the hook after a few head shakes. For some reason those little dick nites work well, but with the tiny little hooks it can be tough to get a good hook set. The other take came on a flash fly on the fly rod, short strike head shake and gone.
What was really working was eggs under a float. Although we hooked a lot of Chinook, we got the chance to tussle with a big, bright burly coho. This fish snarfed down a gob of eggs and took off. Peeled drag and ran downstream almost to the end of the spool, I was starting to worry we might get spooled, we went past the float line and into the backing, and that worried me quite a bit. All's well that ends well though, these fish are brutish!
Got a couple of decent sized chinook that were released, all of them hatchery. They've still got spunk in them, and I imagine they'll keep sitting in the Sky until we get that first rain, or the silvers crowd them out. We found hatchery chinook well above the Wallace, so they really don't want to go home yet, are going further up river to avoid the shallow flats there at the mouth. Pulled the big one out pretty far up.
The coho bite has been best first light, after that it slows down. In the afternoon to finish the day we headed up to Reiter, and what do you know? Empty lot. Excited to have it to ourselves, we head down there, and there are a bunch of inner tubers camped out on the rocks right in front of the hatchery creek, a big flotilla of maybe 15 or 20 people, throwing rocks and slapping the water with their paddles. That turned the bite of for quite a while. When we came down they thankfully left, but we didn't have time to wait for the fish to come back in and called it a day.
There are still some bright steelhead in the river, and we've been catching some big dolly varden as well on the Sky. The coho are here and will be for the next two months or so, so now is he time to get out and sharpen your hooks and start filling your smoker! I've got some dates available in the next few weeks, so if you're looking to get out and learn the water, we've got salmon in the Stilly, Snoho, Sky and Green, and soon we'll be bonking the big brute kings on the Olympic Penisula, I'm filling up fast, so get an early start! Looking forward to seeing you out on the river!
Nate Treat Fishing
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