This beautiful, foot-long Puget Sound sea-run cutthroat trout was my biggest fish landed on a strange day of fishing a minus tide.
There is no such thing as a sure thing when you cast a fly for Puget Sound sea-run cutthroat trout.
Well, that's not entirely true.
You can count on the tides to rise and fall, the mixed scents of Douglas fir, shellfish beds, salt water and musty tidal mud. You can count on seeing rips -- those fishy seams between fast and slow water --form off points. And, when you're fishing with my friend Greg Cloud, you can probably count on hooking a few fish.
We expected Trout-O-Rama when we motored away from the Boston Harbor boat ramp at about 6 a.m. Friday. High slack tide was at 5:34 a.m., and the falling tide would suck a LOT of water off a few of our favorite beaches by 12:54 p.m.
The tide table for the morning read like this:
High 5:34 a.m. 14.1 feet
Low 12:54 p.m. -2.4 feet
I'm no math whiz, but it looked like the water level would drop 16.5 feet off some of our favorite sea-run cutt beaches during the next seven hours or so. All that water flowing out of the inlets would create some very fishy rips. I also hoped that the big drop would flush a lot of bait and cutts into the rips and dropoffs. We'd also get to see some beaches at very low water levels. Who knew what we'd find?
The day started with promise. Cloud piloted his boat up an inlet, and the water level was just about kissing the bottom branches of the shoreline trees. The extreme high tide line in many Puget Sound inlets isn't found on the beach. Just look at the bottom branches of the shoreline trees. That is how high the tide can get.
The day's high tide put the water level almost into the bankside trees. This photo was taken during high slack tide, so the water has no tidal current. The water level would drop 16.5 feet in seven hours.
The tide was just going from high slack-- a short time of little or no tidal current -- to the start of the falling tide as we arrived off the first beach of the morning. A tiny little rip formed off a small point, and Cloud eased the boat into position and slid the anchor into the water.
That is when things got weird, and, in a way, kind of wonderful.
Cutts were boiling at the surface, and at our flies, but the strikes seemed half-hearted. A sea-run cutt is not a delicate feeder, and the trout usually hammer a fly that matches the day's menu. I changed from my Chum Baby streamer to a sand lance pattern and then a shrimp pattern, but those strange plucks at the fly didn't change. So, I went back to the Chum Baby, which does a great job of imitating chum salmon fry - and a good job of imitating the eel-like sand lance.
Some very big cutts showed up. One swirled in the rip -- and slammed my Chum Baby, but I bungled the hookset, and the fish rattled off. Another big fish -- or maybe two big fish -- boiled over a bunch of sunken oyster bags, and Cloud hooked and lost one of those big fish. Big cutts make big flashes in the clear water and low light of early morning.
Then a perfect storm of small, 6-inch-long cutts attacked our flies. These small cutts were clearly out of the little streams for their first trip into the rich feeding grounds of Puget Sound -- and they were everywhere.
Cloud, who grew up in South Sound and has fished the inlets for decades, couldn't believe it.
"I have never seen so many cuttie smolt," Cloud said.
We left that beach, as we didn't want to molest the small fish. Cutts have to adjust their bodies to living in salt water, and we didn't want to make life tougher for the dinkers. And catching small cutts isn't nearly as fun as catching big cutts. We hoped that all those little trout would soon become big trout.
The next beach also swarmed with small cutts. So did the next one. And the next.
"Well, we should have great fishing for those fish in two or three years," Cloud said as we fled the Inlet of Dink Cutts and headed for another series of beaches a few miles -- and another inlet -- away.
We reached a favorite rip and didn't get a strike. Hmmm..... We zipped across the inlet to visit another rip and found -- yes, you guessed it -- more swarms of small cutts.
It was wonderful to see so many young fish in the salt water. Lots of small fish show that the cutts are spawning and rearing very well in the many tiny streams that flow into Puget Sound. Puget Sound cutts are all wild -- there are no hatchery plants -- and they need healthy creeks.
But we really wanted to hook a few big cutts.
We went back to that first, favorite rip -- and the trout were there. Sea-run cutts, baitfish, marine worms, shrimp and other creatures move downcurrent to stay wet during the falling tide, as the beaches get bigger and bigger and the water in the upper reaches of an inlet just about vanishes. Pods of cutts move in and out of rips during each tide. A rip that seemed barren of cutts for an hour or more can suddenly come alive with feeding fish.
I hooked and landed a bright, spotted, thick 12-inch-long cutt, and it felt giant. Then Cloud swung his Knudsen Spider -- tied to a short leader on a sinking fly line -- over a set of small standing waves and into the dropoff. A big cutt -- thick and long and strong -- hammered the fly. The big fish used the strong tidal current to put a big bend in Cloud's rod. The fish was coming in -- I had gotten out my camera -- when the trout shook off the fly.
It was that kind of a day.
That same beach -- notice the fallen logs, pebbles and other fishy features -- after the tide began the long drop to minus 2.4 feet. A rip had peeled off the fallen log in the left of the photo, but the rip vanished when the falling water level left the log high and dry.
We never did find the Trout-O-Rama of big feeding sea-run cutts -- and we fished the entire falling tide. We did see lots of beaches at low tide -- and found a few spots to fish on future trips. We also saw the future -- in the form of lots of small cutts.
I think we can count on that.
