A Trip That Fell Flat

So in place of writing a boring introduction post with no pictures or anything, this is how we will start out. My name is Connor, I work part time, I enjoy the great pacific northwest and I am learning how to fly fish. This blog will be all about my many misadventures mixed with some success.

Today was the second trip I have taken out to the Gig Harbor area in order to find the renowned sea run cutthroat trout. If one scours the internet enough there is plenty of places that provide a jumping off point. One of the places I try to stop by is the Gig Harbor Fly Shop (gigharborflyshop.com) They have been helpful in putting together the flies that apply to cutthroat as well as suggesting a few places. While there I received some "swag" that I will definitely be sporting on future fishing trips.

Now for the fishing tale. Sometimes you just don't get what you expect. Starting the fishing, I had a slack tide which ment some time to walk up the beach and find features that might prove to be places to aim for. As I made it all the way to one end of the beach, the tide started moving and that ment the start of fly flinging. After flinging for an hour and a half to no avail, I gradually worked my way back to around the starting point. An interesting feature about this beach is that it has portions that are mucky that suddenly meet stretches that are full of barnacle covered rocks or oyster beds. The sand bar stretches out a lot further than expected and I was able to wade up to my waist with no problems at all. I noticed while walking out that there was a shadow in the water that darted off ahead of me. A few steps later and it happened again. There was even a sudden cloud of sediment that was stirred up. Immediately I guessed that there was some type of flatfish in the area based off how the shadow moved and the type of sediment on the bottom. At the time I was still throwing chum imitation flies in hopes of getting a sea-run. After a baitfish of some kind decided to go airborne, I quickly casted out to the jump site and started slowly stripping in. All of a sudden there was resistance on the line as if I was once again the lucky winner of seaweed. When the "seaweed" started to move it became apparent that this was a fish. The little flounder didn't fight very hard but i was still very excited to catch something at all. In fact, this is my first Puget Sound fish. The Starry Flounder.

I was surprised to have caught this fish but for those of you who want the technical specs of the setup being used, here is what I currently know. I used a 9' 6wt Scientific Anglers 2 piece rod, floating line, a no name ebay fly reel (more to come on that), 7.5' 2X Rio leader, with an olive marabou clouser. The fish was caught in roughly 5 feet of water.

All in all, I would call this a successful few hours out on the sound. These flounders could easily be targeted by fly anglers who would spend the time looking for larger populations of them. Stay tuned for more adventures, misadventures, and gear related posts!

Thanks for Reading!