Willow River Rainbows....

[DocSpotty]

Yesterday, Friday, was spent fishing the Willow River for trout……as there are virtually no king salmon present. Usually by now the kings have worked themselves upriver to spawn which concentrates the rainbows in those areas. Unfortunately, with few kings (we spotted 2) the bows are still spread out all over the river and we really had to go searching for them.

It was ironic that I mentioned to my friend Mike that with all the trips I had floated the Willow never had I caught a grayling there….today I brought a rod specifically set up for dry flies….never used it. We discussed what to use and Mike insisted on his “Marty Fledman” fly….those of you old enough to remember Feldman get the picture. It’s an all white fly with big, weighted googly eyes. It serves to purposes….it is highly visible and resembles the salmon smolts present all over in the river this time of year. My preference was to use something “big, ugly and green”.

So we headed downstream and my first catch is?????? You got it…..the hard to find grayling:



The dorsal fin was split….since there were no hook marks it could have been a river otter trying to chase it down for a meal…..or a careless fisherman. Pretty little sucker anyway. It was another 15 minutes before the first rainbow of the trip showed up:



It was followed a short time later by its twin brother:



The fish were quite healthy and fat. Sometime later, low and behold, I happened into another, bigger grayling:



This little guy was fat and had a beautiful dorsal fin:



From there things got slower fast, and in the next 2 hours only 3 fish were caught:







Kind of got scarce after that so after losing 3 or 4 flies (lost about 20+ on the day…very snaggy) of the white variety I decided to replace my most recent loss with something “big, green and ugly”…..of course, I didn’t let Mike know that. First cast in the deep hole I was in resulting in an arm ripping strike as the olive, wooly headed sculpin started to sweep at the end of the cast…..I set the hook….and got nothing. At least they showed an interest. A bit later I tagged my first on the sculpin:



Followed quickly by a second and third:



Mike was getting a bit frustrated (although he hid it well….I knew… ;-)) but stuck with the white googly eye. The next hole, one of the longest in this stretch of river I tagged 3 more rainbows in only about 10 casts:







Soon after that the bite on my sculpin stopped so I had to switch back to the white critter. We floated for a few more hours with nothing but beautiful scenery. Then we took a smaller side stream down to the landing. On the way we hit a beautiful little hole where I had one dart out and miss my fly. We pulled in and next cast I caught my last bow:



But as he was playing in a much larger fish was swimming with him. Mike figured out this hole as he caught 3 bows in a row and then tied into the larger one….what a beautiful rainbow it turned out to be:





As we finished the float I plopped the googly eye into a deep hole between a rock and a downed tree and was rewarded with a monster strike. Twice this fish cleared the water and was in the 24-25 inch category. Then it was straight through the tree and branches and the beast earned his freedom….next time…..

On the drive home I stopped by my bosses house to give him a Winston flyrod I had just finished building for him. It is one of my nicest in 27 years of building them:











I probably spent 20 hours cutting, gluing and lathing the handle assembly….the red is cocobolo wood, like the reel seat.

Good fishin guys,

Brian

[elevated]

man beautiful fish and scenery! Amazing rod too!

[Señor.Chilax]

Thank you for the awesome river report. It's always nice to see those wild rainbows. And that rod... What a beauty.

[Greg Madrigal]

Damn Doc, you really get into teh nice fish man. Good for you taking advantage of the best Ak has to offer. I am jealous and thouroughly enjoy your reports! Keep em coming as I don't think I can afford AK this year due to my unemployment.

Thanks 4 teh post!

GM<><