I've been meaning to check out the scenic country headwaters of the Skykomish for a while, more for the scenery and variety than for the fish, which I expected to be mostly the same 6-12" rainbows and coastal cutthroats found in all the other rivers on the west slope of the Washington cascades. I was also looking to practice Euro nymphing some more, and the Foss River has some ideal stretches of pocket water for that. Starting late in the morning, I was successful early and often. Then, toward mid afternoon, the action shut down completely. I went from catching fish in every pocket to seeing no sign of them in extremely inviting pools. The water temperature was optimal, but the fish were just off.

For the last hour of daylight I drove to the South Fork Skykomish and fished a couple of promising pools. Fish finally started rising intensely right at dusk (to what, I'm not sure), and I caught six small rainbows on dries.

Throughout the day there were no noteworthy hatches, but I did find a couple of bugs worth photographing. I'm especially curious what a near-mature Ephemerellid nymph was doing in the river in mid-September, but I've not yet had time to put most of my recently collected specimens under the microscope and see what they are.

I had some errands down near the Green, so I stopped on the way back at Flaming Geyser State Park to wet a line. There was some nice-looking water, but I wasn't catching much until near the end of the day. I left early in the evening, not wanting to take my chances with the "high theft area -- do not leave valuables in your car" warning signs at the parking lot.