Rain vs. The T

[Tim P]

Quick report from this past weekend (actually, Sat 1/23 - Tue 1/26) on the T.

4 anglers for 10 total angler-days of effort - 6 angler-days of bank fishing, and 4 angler-days of drifts (2 drift days were Mon., Tues.; two anglers per drift.) Both drift and bank days were about 10 hours of fishing effort per day (driving time included for bank days).

Angling effort was a mix of indicator nymphing and swing presentations.

Excepting Saturday, angling effort was entirely above DC due to water color and flow conditions.

Only 1 steelhead from the bank, and 5 to the boat on drift days, with about 4 more dropped - 3 out of 4 anglers got "blanked from the bank" for the trip ... covering essentially all of the foot-accessible water from DC to Lewiston. (Pretty much every place you can think of, we covered it.)

4 or more browns were C&R'ed, about half of which came on the swing. 1 adult steelhead was taken on a swung tube fly, and a couple more grabs missed on the swing as well.

In 3 days, I managed 1 brown, 1 sucker, and 1 steelhead - my PB, a huge beat up old hatchery buck, estimated at 35-36" (17-20 lbs?). The best angler in our group landed zero steelhead in four days of fishing (he had about four fish "on" during his drift day, but LDR'ed all of them - talk about frustration!).

TFS had three boats on the river Monday, and eight boats on Tuesday - all of them launching at Bucktail or further upriver. Talk about a crowd... that count does not include non-TFS boats, who were also up in the same reach. Rather a surprise, that many boats midweek. I guess even midweek in January is getting crowded on the T, and having everyone forced to the top compounds the problem of pressured water. (Although I only saw one other bank angler not from our group in 3 days of fishing).

We had high hopes that the rain would enervate the fish - both the rains in the prior week, and what fell during the angling days (Sun/Mon) ... above DC, as much as 600 cfs was coming in to the T from side creeks, and the color was in the favor of the angler - no worse than about 4' of visibility (depending on location and day), a sort of greenish/tan color.

The flows were high enough that we didn't have our choice of reaches on the river; I suppose that things could have been very different for this trip with slightly less rain, and a couple more reaches to choose from.

That's steelhead angling!


tim

[jayclarkflyfishing]

Tim-
Welcome to the boards!Sounds like you ran into some winter steelhead conditions.I am not surprised by your results as it seems the winter run is mostly wild fish and I would imagine that many of them headed into there spawning tribs with the high water.As far as the crowds no surprise here either as the T has been the only fishable steelhead river in the north coast besides the Smith.Funny how rain is either a blessing or a curse.Like you said it's steelhead fishing.


Jay

[wjorg]

.....they might be the only game in town if you prefer to fish unstained water. Hard to have confidemce fishing mud soup untill you hook a hot bright fish in it. (ear to ear grin).