Sandy Creek Steel 10/09

I have heard some pretty nice reports earlier this week from some friends who have been fishing Sandy Creek. The nice thing about the reports have been the ever increasing number of salmon entering the stream. And in a few weeks the salmon will be in full spawning mode. We will start to see more and more spawning reds and more and more fish making their way onto gravel runs and riffle sections to spawn. This will also mean that the trout that are in the stream will start to key in on egg patterns. And more often than not you will be able to find both brown trout and steelhead holding behind the salmon, ready to take advantage of all those loose eggs drifting freely in the current. As a matter of fact, Rich told me of a nice steelhead that was caught by his friend Mike on Tuesday. And later that morning, he came face to face with a large brown of about 10-12lbs. Very exciting!!

On Wednesday, the notorious B.O.B. hit up the lower part of Sandy Creek and saw good numbers of salmon moving upstream all morning. He hooked up quite a bit, but only managed to land a hand full of fish. And that was in part due to his excessive use of 6lb. tippet!

Anyway....I wanted to get into the action, so Ethan and I went on our own Sandy Creek fly fishing adventure yesterday morning.

Ethan and I pulled off on the shoulder of the road just before the Church Street bridge at about 10:00am . I could see several other cars parked on the opposite side of the bridge with several guys frantically getting their gear together. We on the other hand, took our time getting ready and slowly made our way down to the stream. We were going to walk downstream in hopes of getting our own piece of water to fish. After pushing through the brush on the trail that led to the stream, we found it to be in great condition and unoccupied. Plenty of water, with just a little stain to it. Perfect! And to make it even better, a good sized salmon made it's way to the riffle just below where we were standing. We spent a little while making many careful drifts in front of the fish before we hooked up with our first salmon of the morning. We fought it down to the next little pool where we eventually landed it. Ethan proved again to be a great "net man" and he held the fish while I got the camera ready. After a few quick shots we released her to finish her journey and hopefully find a mate.

We found a few more fish in that pool but they weren't interested in taking a fly and eventually moved downstream to another pool.

Our next fish came out of a pool that has been great for spring steelhead. But we would have to be on our game here because of a giant limb from a large tree that had fallen into and accross the pool. This would make it very difficult to land fish, as Luke found out this past Saturday. I began to cast at the head of the pool and after just a few drifts my line stopped and I set up on a nice fish. I could feel it shake it's head down in the pool at first. It then went on a little run and came up to the surface shaking it's head again. When I saw silver sides with a nice red stripe down the side I new it was my first steelhead of the fall. It was a small steelhead. But what it lacked in size it made up for in fight. Even with my 8 weight fly rod bent well into the lower part of the rod, I had trouble keeping this fish at the top of the run. And just when I thought the game was over, it jumped about three feet in the air and took another run at the limb in the water. A minute later, Ethan and I had our first steelhead in the net. A nice male of about 5 or 6lbs.

The last part of our morning was spent in search of a large lake run brown trout. We never did find one. I guess that will have to wait for another trip. It will only be a matter of time now. We did catch another nice salmon though. One that took at least 10 minutes to land. What a great way to end a fantastic morning of fishing!

All fish took a #10 brown woolly bugger dead drifted near the bottom.

See you at the stream!