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3. Fun float down the Yakima

I drove out from the gloomy rain of the Seattle area this morning to float the Yakima River in the rain shadow of the Cascades. The weather in the lower Canyon reach (from mile 20 to Red's Fly Shop) was beautiful, although a bit windy for casting.

I floated solo in my packraft, which isn't really a good craft for anchoring and fishing, so the plan was just to use the boat to move between spots to get out and wade. At this water level (1500 CFS at Umtanum, fairly low), there still aren't a lot of great spots for that, at least not compared to the total amount of water fishable from a drift boat. I can see why those are so popular on this river. Still, I found a few decent spots.

Insect activity was quiet. I saw one October Caddis flying around and a handful of other things, but the only numerous insects were Baetids of some sort (I didn't catch any), and they weren't especially thick. They did intersect with one of the better spots I stopped, though, and my first cast with a size 18 parachute BWO hooked a nice rainbow, around 18". I fought it for a few minutes and was beginning to tire it out, just about ready to pull the landing net off my back, when I got a little bit too aggressive against its bulldogging and it bent out the little hook and got away. I fished a cast's length downstream for half an hour or so, then tried that spot again, and to amazement I hooked a fish of the same size, in the same spot, on the same fly. It's possible there was more than one nice fish right there, but I'm more inclined to guess this was the same fish hitting again. I've never had a big trout give me a second chance so quickly. I've done it with naive little grayling in Alaska, but this was a first, if indeed that's what happened.

After that, surface activity really died down for the rest of the day. I spent some time swinging a small olive Sculpzilla, on which I missed too many strikes throughout the day. Some might have been small trout that only nipped the tail, but a couple fish were solidly on the line for a few seconds before dropping it. I think my ten years throwing dry flies to grayling dulled my other technique a bit. Finally I managed a solid hookup in a deep riffle and won a great fight with a 20" rainbow that kept dodging the net, trying to run between my feet, and other crafty tricks.

Mule deer, quail, and other wildlife complemented the golden canyon scenery to make this trip really enjoyable, even though the fishing was slow at times.