Wild Trout in the Salt
Separated from the Pacific Ocean by Washington’s Olympic Peninsula, Puget Sound connects to the Strait of Juan de Fuca through Admiralty Inlet, Desolation Pass, and the Swinomish Channel, with most of the water moving through Admiralty Inlet to the west of Whidbey Island.
Squeezed between the Olympic Mountains to the west and the Cascade Range to the east, Puget Sound was repeatedly carved by glaciers; it reaches more than 900 feet deep, but ranges from 400 to 600 feet deep along most of its trench. In the Unites States, only Chesapeake Bay forms a larger estuary. The Sound’s cold, clear seawater flows like a massive river during tide changes.
A fly angler standing knee-deep in the Sound can blast out a long-distance double-haul and barely scratch at the wide expanse of cold salt water in Puget Sound. Luckily, that’s ample casting distance to find hungry fish year-round.
First-time visitors can be forgiven for not being able to make sense of the scale or read the Sound’s subtleties, but when they look again, or spend more time walking the beaches with a fly rod in hand, Puget Sound eventually reveals its complex, vibrant marine ecosystem—which includes all five species of Pacific salmon as well as sea-run coastal cutthroat trout, which spend most of their lives in salt water. Sea-run cutts (aka sea-runs) have the distinctive orange throat markings, dark olive backs, and black spots of their inland cousins, but glow with the pale iridescence of an anadromous fish evolved to survive in the sea.
Sea-runs hunt the shallow edges of Puget Sound year-round, feasting on baitfish, salmon fry, shrimp, copepods, and other macroinvertebrates. They aren’t picky eaters, but consistently finding these trout requires anglers to become dedicated observers of Puget Sound’s marine environment and grapple with the scale of these waters. Fortunately, the lessons learned from targeting trout in freshwater rivers and streams apply if an angler is willing to look for overlaps.
Puget Sound by Fly
Puget Sound offers an impressive diversity of species and angling scenarios. Depending on the season and location, you might fish for lingcod and black rockfish (aka “black bass”) along break walls and jetties with high-density sinking lines and big streamers, intercept migrating coho or pink salmon (and maybe the occasional chinook), or target chum salmon staging at creek mouths. All these species are worthy of attention and have their dedicated adherents, but day in and day out, rain or shine, for my money, those gorgeous, fascinating sea-run cutthroat trout are the big draw.
Bonuses are also part of the attraction: when targeting cutts, you just might hook a resident coho salmon or even a Dolly Varden.
Moreover, the cutthroat fishery is remarkably accessible. Anywhere along the shores of Puget Sound, you are probably no more than 15 minutes by car from a park or public beach where cutthroat could be biting. A boat offers some advantages but isn’t necessary. The sea-run action is accessible to anyone, whether you live in the area or decide to fly into Seattle-Tacoma International Airport packing a fly rod, waders, and boots.
In fact, some productive beaches are within the Seattle city limits. On a quiet winter morning, you could have a beach all to yourself and easily forget that you are mere minutes from iconic landmarks such as the Space Needle and Pike Place Market. And if one beach is too crowded for your tastes, another is nearby.
The Four Regions
For the sake of simplicity, Puget Sound can be considered as having four zones: southern, central, and northern Puget Sound proper, and Hood Canal to the west. South Puget Sound encompasses all of the water from Olympia northeasterly to Point Defiance (in north Tacoma); central Puget Sound runs from the southern tip of Vashon Island to the northern tip of Bainbridge Island; everything north of Bainbridge Island falls within the northern zone; and Hood Canal is a long fjord running between the Olympic and Kitsap Peninsulas, west of the main basin.
Though exceptions are plentiful, the northern and central zones feature more beaches close to Puget Sound’s main channel. These beaches are subject to intense tidal currents on both incoming and outgoing tides, and many have steep drop-offs. In the southern zone, the Sound is smaller and forms more inlets and bays, and this region seems to offer more consistent action for cutthroat, often along surprisingly intimate beaches. Hood Canal has vast tracts of eelgrass, kelp beds, and oyster beds, and the fish seem to exhibit significant site fidelity to the beaches along this narrow passage.
Emerald Water Anglers in West Seattle offers guided trips that branch out to all areas of the Sound, but favorite beaches are within the central and southern zones. If you have an entire day to work with, you can catch a ferry and head to the beaches of Hood Canal.
While long-timers have their favorite beaches, newcomers shouldn’t feel overwhelmed by the vast geography. Puget Sound comprises 1,332 miles of shoreline, and hundreds of those miles offer productive habitat where fly anglers can target sea-runs. My advice is to pick three beaches nearby and fish them regularly. Learn how they fish on incoming and outgoing tides and throughout the seasons. Be observant and keep a journal of when you catch fish at each location; log the water temperature, tide stage, and which flies were working. Make a point to remember boulders, reefs, kelp beds, and other structures that are visible on low tides, then fish those places when they are underwater at high tides. Close observation reveals patterns, and patterns beget predictability. One beach might fish best during a winter high tide; another might be productive on an incoming tide, but not on the ebb tide. Everything you learn on those three beaches will help you understand any other beach you visit.
I also tell new anglers, and often remind longtime friends and clients, to remember to pay attention. Don’t forget to look around. Puget Sound beaches are swarming with fascinating life—I’m constantly reminded of the childhood thrill of exploring tide pools. You’ll see starfish, crabs, sand dollars, and aggregating anemones. Huge schools of baitfish and salmon fry will swim past. Sea otters, seals, and sea lions will be fishing the same waters. If you’re near the main channel, massive cargo ships will power past, their large wakes arriving at the beach minutes later. Occasionally you’ll see a nuclear submarine cruising along the surface, often with an escort of other naval ships. Maybe you’ll even see a pod of orcas—always an amazing sight.
Traits of a Productive Beach
Any beach can kick out a cutthroat or two, but productivity largely depends on where the bait is at any given time of the year. Anglers who study their favorite beaches learn when to expect the best fishing, and learn to identify the best features of any productive cutthroat beach. These insights pay dividends because the ideal traits of a good cutthroat beach are universal. Learn what to look for and apply what you learn to every new beach you visit. In fact, a deep roster of “confidence” beaches—places where you consistently hook fish—might be the most important tool for a Puget Sound cutthroat angler.
I prefer gently sloping beaches over beaches with steep drop-offs. A low gradient means more shallow-water acreage to hold bait and cruising trout throughout tidal swings. It also means deep wading isn’t required and more of the water is productive without the need to use sinking lines or heavy flies, neither of which are worth the trade-offs to me. Sinking lines are difficult to manage in the beach environment, virtually requiring a stripping basket, and even slow-sinking intermediates can sink a fly into vegetation.
Boulders, points, scalloped shorelines, and other physical features are worth noting, because when the tide is pushing in or out of Puget Sound, the water is moving just like a large river. Any such structures create ripples, seams, pockets, and shelter where bait, and feeding sea-run cutthroat, congregate. Likewise, kelp, eelgrass, and oyster beds provide habitat for baitfish and other organisms that cutthroat eat. These swaths of aquatic vegetation are most productive when at least a foot of water is flowing over the top. If the tide is out and the weeds reach the water’s surface, I fish elsewhere so my fly doesn’t hang up on every cast.
A good map of Puget Sound is indispensable. Study the map, looking for places where a beach is sheltered from the main channel and its racing tidal currents. Look for bays, coves, and sheltered inlets where the tidal pull and push is more subdued than out near the channel. Stream inlets themselves are not critical features for cutts, but the sheltered beaches they often form provide good habitat. These fish do spawn, and sometimes feed, in fresh water, but stream deltas don’t define a productive beach; other factors are more important.
Fishing a Beach
You’re on the beach, rod in hand, ready to go. Now you’re looking at this massive body of salt water and wondering, “How am I supposed to find a fish in all of this?”
Ignore the vastness. If bait is moving along the beach, sea-run cutthroat will be there. Long casts catch more fish (more time with the fly in the water on each retrieve), but plenty of fish are in close enough that 30-foot casts find plenty of hungry mouths. So cast a length of line you can consistently straighten out over the water.
Check the tide stage and current, then start at the “upstream” or “top” end of the section of the beach and fish your way down-current. On most beaches, you needn’t wade beyond knee-deep. Make a cast or two cross-current, and retrieve in a slow, methodical cadence. This subtle retrieve is critical; you want the fly wobbling and skittering across the tidal current like a wounded baitfish, not jerking or darting or speeding through the water.
After those inaugural cross-current presentations, begin fanning casts more down and across the current. I illustrate the tactic to clients by extending my arm, fingers splayed and palm down, like I’m pointing all my fingers down-current along the beach; then I explain that my thumb, pointing straight out into the Sound, represents those first cross-current casts, and my fingers represent the ensuing casting angles. The index finger is the angle for the next cast, which is made down and across as if you were casting for steelhead; after that, each ensuing cast is made at a steeper downstream angle until you finally arrive at the pinkie-finger cast—directly downstream and parallel to shore.
After working through that pattern with five or more casts, take a few steps down-current along the beach and repeat the casting sequence. Keep working down-current until you find fish. On many beaches, it’s a sound strategy to fish your way to the end and then walk back to start at the up-current end again. All the while, the water level will be rising or falling, depending on the tide, meaning that on that second pass you are covering different structure.
Beach fishing for cutthroat is systematic. Keep moving and keep repeating that five-point casting tactic.
Your fly is fishing the moment it lands, so you need direct contact with it. Cast straight and make sure the fly turns over. Try to cast too much line and you will need a few line strips to establish contact—and in that brief interval, you may well miss a chance to hook a fish. Immediately after the cast and throughout the retrieve, keep the rod tip under the water. Many of my clients are unaccustomed to this trick, which maximizes your contact with the fly, and I must remind them all day long. If the rod tip is above the surface of the water, by even a few inches, you lose a bit of contact with the fly each time you begin to strip line.
Sea-run cutts are notoriously itinerant. If a beach isn’t crowded with other anglers, I almost always make a second pass before I move on to a second location. But if I find willing fish, I stay put—sometimes for an entire day if the fish keep cooperating.
Both ebb and flood tides can be productive, but slack tide—the interval when the tides are switching and the tidal currents subside—is typically quiet. That’s a great time to eat lunch, drive to a new location, or take a break and watch the ships, or maybe the orcas, go by. Likewise, if I have only an hour or two for fishing, I check the tide tables and make sure I won’t be fishing during the slack-water period, which can last from about 10 minutes to nearly an hour.
Seasons on the Sound
Puget Sound’s sea-run cutthroat comprise a year-round fishery. That said, both seasonality and weather dictate where cutthroat roam and what they eat. You can catch a great fish on any cast, at any time of the year, under any conditions, in Puget Sound, but a few insights can tip the odds in your favor.
Summer on the Sound is beautiful; tourists and locals swarm the beaches during nice weather, making fly casting tenuous. Meanwhile, those long, bright, sunny days that draw people to the beaches also tend to make trout spooky, so the fish seek shelter in deeper water. So, during summer, set your alarm clock for early morning. Many summer mornings dawn still and cool, with a marine layer of fog shrouding the clear water; get to the beach before sunrise for the most productive period of the day and you’ll enjoy untrammeled beaches and prime low-light fishing when the cutts come in close. By the time the summer beach crowds gather, you’ll be reeling up and headed home.
Autumn ushers in the infamously soggy Pacific Northwest weather. The regional jargon includes many different monikers for rainfall, but whether it’s misting or drizzling or anything else in the form of rain, don your raincoat and hit the beach. Low light equates to fish cruising close to shore and quite possibly feeding all day. I love those gray days with a little spit in the air. Inclement weather leaves the beaches to anglers, and likely you’ll have a beach to yourself for hours.
The cooler months can be windy, though. It pays to practice and hone your double-haul casting for these conditions and keep a roster of sheltered beaches for the windiest days. Also practice delivering a fly with a backcast, or over your off shoulder—an effective tactic when the wind is blowing right to left against a right-handed caster or left to right against a left-handed caster. No need to get an extra piercing (barbless hooks are critical for safely releasing fish, but also for removing a fly from your ear). With a little experience on the region’s beaches, you will learn to check the wind forecast and choose a beach that offers some protection. The Belgian cast is also handy in a crosswind; the over-the-opposite-side version is well demonstrated at www.youtube.com/watch?v=aawPbuBpxbs.
Cutthroat enjoy ample forage year-round in Puget Sound, but spring is especially bounteous because salmon smolts are departing the rivers for life in salt water. From March through June, out-migrating juvenile salmon can stir feeding frenzies. Watch for commotion in the form of cutthroat crashing schools of bait, and if you see such a frenzy within casting range, get to that spot pronto. After the bonanza of juvenile salmon, cutthroat turn their attention to herring, sand lance, copepods, and shrimp. Luckily, sea-run cutts are seldom hyper-selective and a handful of different patterns cover the bases. I like to keep it simple, but other local anglers revel in precisely matching specific prey items. If you enjoy imitative fly tying, dive in and learn about the primary trout foods in Puget Sound.
My favorite fly, which I fish year-round, is a small gurgler that my father created and named the Sound Searcher. This sparse fly is about 2 inches long and features a foam back and a single doll eye glued to the bottom. It is a perfect imitation of a wounded baitfish struggling against the tidal current. Sea-run cutts love it, and few things in angling are as much fun as watching one of these fish explode on a surface pattern waking across the current. When you fish surface patterns, remember that you aren’t trying to mimic a ski boat; don’t pop and “chug” the fly. Work the fly with a steady pulse-and-pause rhythm and twitch it subtly.
I don’t like weighted flies for beach fishing, but some anglers rely on them. Some of my patterns have bead-chain eyes, but I don’t use lead barbell eyes, which can cause flies to hang up on the bottom or in vegetation. Small, unweighted patterns are easy to cast, and they swim through the water horizontally. I primarily use size 8 through 12 hooks—these small flies easily handle big cutts, but don’t injure small trout like big hooks can.
Gems of Puget Sound
Sea-run cutthroat are amazing. Many anglers associate cutts with mountain streams, but coastal cutthroat thrive in the marine ecosystem. Treat these little gems with care. When you hook a cutthroat, try to land and release it quickly, preferably in deep enough water that the fish can’t injure itself by thrashing around on barnacles and stones; use a fish-friendly soft-rubber net.
I’ve been chasing these fish for nearly a quarter of a century in Puget Sound, and I’m always cognizant that I need to do my part to ensure their survival, especially in the face of burgeoning human development and population growth in the region. I’m not alone in my fascination and advocacy for sea-run cutthroat: the Coastal Cutthroat Coalition (www.coastalcutthroatcoalition.com) represents a diverse group of people interested in these unique fish, and the organization leads the way in researching the species. Check out their website—perhaps you can help protect this unique fishery.
Well-known fly-fishing photographer and guide Dave McCoy owns Emerald Water Anglers fly shop in Seattle. Greg Fitz is a Seattle-based writer and the communications manager for the Wild Steelhead Coalition
Sound Searcher
Hook: Daichii 1750, size 6
Body: Black Ice Dub Black (or color of choice)
Tail: Ripple Ice Fiber
Back: White 2 mm Fly Foam (or color of choice)
Eye: Pearl/red adhesive holographic eye
Puget Sound
NOTEBOOK
When: Year-round.
Where: Publicly accessible beaches throughout Puget Sound.
Access: Walk-and-wade fishing from numerous public access locations.
Headquarters: Seattle, Tacoma, Gig Harbor, and smaller towns along the shoreline of Puget Sound
Appropriate gear: 6-wt. rods, floating lines, 7.5- to 8-ft. fluorocarbon leaders, 1X–3X tippets (thoroughly rinse gear and flies after fishing).
Useful fly patterns: Sound Searcher, baitfish patterns, Miyawaki Beach Popper, Woolly Buggers, sculpin patterns, small Clouser-style patterns, rabbit-strip polychaete worm patterns.
Necessary accessories: Waders or wading boots, polarized sunglasses, warm clothing in layers, tide tables.
Nonresident license: $20.15/1 day, $28.95/2 days, $35.55/3 days, $59.75/annual saltwater.
Fly shops/guides: Seattle: Emerald Water Anglers, (206) 708-7250, www.emeraldwateranglers.com; The Avid Angler, (206) 362-4030, www.avidangler.com. Gig Harbor: Gig Harbor Fly Shop, (253) 851-3474, www.gigharborflyshop.com. Mill Creek: Pacific Fly Fishers, (425) 742-2402, www.pacificflyfishers.com. Tacoma: Puget Sound Fly Company, (253) 472-2420, www.pugetsoundflyco.com. Justin Waters, (360) 318-5664, www.all-waters.com; Ben Zander, www.soundflyfishing.com.
Books/maps: Fly Fishing for Searun Cutthroat by Chester Allen. Washington Atlas & Gazetteer by DeLorme.
Dave McCoy
