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.

Yakima River Marathon

June 27, 2014

Date: 6/27/14

Anglers: Joe, Bill, and Steve

Flies: Biot Sparkle Stone, McKnights Fat Boy Chernobyl Ant, Egg Sucking Chernobyl, Chubby Sally, King Prince, The Moorish Sculpin, J Slam Dry Fly #8

Section: Cle Elum River to Thorp! Yes, we went long today.

Results: 10+ Trout Landed, several fish in the "trophy" class 17+ inches.

We decided to go big today. I had a couple of experienced shooters in the boat today and we wanted to fish fast, no indicators all day. Dry flies, maybe a dropper, or a streamer. If you want to cover a lot of water quickly and stay on the move then fish with no bobber! You can slice apart the bank habitat with a single dry fly or strip streamers under the brush piles and through the rocks piles. Like a Samurai! I will say that fly casting is 90% of catching fish, the rest is pretty easy. I had a guest say this quote the other day... "for as important as casting is on these trips we sure don't practice enough". I respectfully agree, float trips are a big adventure. To make the most of it,please work on your fly cast! Plus its fun. At your next backyard BBQ string up a couple of rods and play some casting games.

The guys today also had great taste in fly rods, the G Loomis Streamdance GLX is one of the smoothest casting all around fly rods out there. I still can't decide... is it a fast action or medium fast? They had both the 4 and 5 weights on board today.

Here are a few shots of the Goldens that have been on both the Yakima and Naches Rivers this past week.

The fishing was best early on dry fly and droppers using the Biot Sparkle Stone #12, super great fly! I had not used this one in a while but the Yellow Sally's and little Goldens have been hatching all week and we wanted to match the hatch. We ran this dropper nymph about 24" below a dry fly on 4X Fluoroflex Plus Tippet

USE THIS NYMPH WHEN YOU SEE SMALL GOLDEN STONES OR YELLOW SALLY STONEFLIES!

Later in the day we switched it up to a single dry fly, no dropper. To move the fly fast, and I mean FAST around the river to different seamlines, under the trees, switch sides, and skate it accross the little back eddies you need to fish a single dry. You can do so much more with a single dry AND if the fish are eating the dry fly you should CUT THE DROPPER OFF. Fish get tangled with two flies and it cuts them up with they get tangled in a two fly rig.

This fly, the McKnights Fat Boy is a killer fly for the Yakima River Summer Stonefly.

Summary:

The wind started howling late in the day and the Thorp area is NOT where you want to be when the wind starts to blow. It got slightly tougher later in the day too because it got sunny and our best fishing was under cloud cover. In fact, when it gone sunny the dry fly fishing got slower.... we tied dropper nymphs back on and immediately were into fish using droppers.

The entire river is in awesome shape, just take good care of the fish and you are more likely to have great fishing on your next visit.

Joe, Bob Aid and I floated the same stretch late in the week. We used your tactics sans streamers. Great tip on what nymph to use when Yellow Sally's are hatching. We could have used a couple:) Mike
Joe: my friend Mike and I fished with Charlie Cooper from Bristol to Thorp yesterday and stung several big fish on streamers, but it was TOUGH! Wind picked up @ about 10 am and really didn't give us a break until about 3:30pm! A smattering of PMDs and a handful of yellow sallies never really seemed to get the fish looking up. With that said, the fish that DID connect on the streamer, while few-and-far-between, we're worth waiting for!!! Having fished it for almost 20 years now, I sure wish the Yakima fished as good as it looks....
Yesterday would have been a tough day to float float that stretch.
Going down the Yakima stretch with wind blowing up for so long is never too easy. You did a splendid job Joe. Nice to see you are working with some experts to catch fishes.