About the Author

Joe Rotter

Joe is the "blogger in chief" here at Red's in addition to being our guide service manager and partner here at Red's. He is a father of 3 spunky children his wife Kelly can only be found fishing when the temperature gets above 85 degrees and the fish are gobbling up dry flies.

In addition to being a fly fishing junkie, Joe is a hard core bowhunter, is a volunteer Hunter's Eductation Instructor, and loves riding horses with his kiddos. Joe still guides a small part of the time but spends most of his time working on web marketing, travel, and helping customers find the right tools and information for the job.

Scouting Trips, Old Friends, Family Time, and a Little Fishing

July 5, 2017

My last couple weeks have been a lot of fishing. I came off the Baja trip and got straight to work this past Friday with an afternoon float in the Farmlands on the Yakima River. The fishing was decent on nymphs and we fished in the middle of the day because we had to get to a 30th Wedding Anniversary party for a great fishing buddy of ours and couldn't miss it. We only got a few up on dry flies, but did the best on a small nymph fished light under an indicator. The fish are willing to come up in the column right and were hammering this prince nymph. I love the natural colored biot. I could never figure out why a traditional Prince Nymph has white. The darn thing works either way but I seem to get more takes on this one.

Amber Prince Nymph

On Saturday I fished earlier in the morning. Like 10 am haha. A bunch of us were up late celebrating at our buddies anniversary party. I went out with husband and wife that I really love fishing with and we went DFO, Dry Fly Only on the Yakima River in the Canyon section down here below Red's. We stayed with dry flies the entire time and managed to get some nice fish!

Our best fly on Saturday was... drumroll...

Crowd Surfer Stonefly Dry Fly- Golden #8 and #10. Use the #10 in direct sunlight.

On Sunday we mixed it up and took off heading south to float the Naches River. This little sucker is still flowing a bit swift but will be coming into PERFECT shape in the next two weeks. Although the flow was fast we did get a few fish including a couple of well above average Cutthroat. Typically we go to the Naches to evade the weekend crowds, hit some whitewater, and stick some aggressive little Cuttys on dry flies. Fish 6-13" are the game. We get a few to 18" but they are pretty rare. The adventure is in the float!