Laegreid Outdoors

March 29 The day dawned comfortably grey and rainy as I sneaked out of bed. My fiance slept soundly as the door closed behind me and I began the two-hour drive to Rockport, Washington and the gorgeous Skagit River. When I made my usual pre-drive stop at Cowgirls Espresso, the barista asked, as per usual, if I was going fishing. "Not today." Now, sane people usually don't drive for hours to prime steelhead water specifically not to fish, but then, those who pursue the grey ghosts are not well-known for their sanity, and the event I was driving to was created in protest of laws that make little sense. What Laws? To avoid writing a book, lets break it down to its simplest form. Laws regarding wild steelhead are, in the opinion of the Occupy Skagit (OS) movement * , a wee bit wonky.   All wild Puget Sound steelhead are listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act . This would be great, if all Puget Sound steelhead populations faced the same pressures and ...

It's that time of year again. Baby salmon are swimming out of the rivers en mass, the days are getting longer, and Sea-Run Cutthroat trout (SRC) are reappearing in Puget Sound. This past weekend I was able to connect with one of these feisty fish on a beach in Marine Area 13 , also known as the magical South Sound. There are a few great things about this fishery; the first of which is the quarry. The SRC's are amazing trout, powerful for their size, aggressive, gorgeous, and elusive. They provide one of the Northwest's most unique fishing experiences, and oh man am I glad to be able to take advantage of it. Image borrowed from the Washington Dept. of Fish and Wildlife , since I have yet to take a good picture of one. The second great thing about the SRC fishery is the location. I love Puget Sound, from Deception Pass to Budd Inlet, but good SRC beaches are my absolute favorite. They are full of life, from weird little crawling things scooting between barnacle-cove...

One of my more successful casts. The day before Christmas, Christmas Eve-Eve, if you will, my father and I decided to chase after the wily Steelhead trout. Armed with my 13' fly rod and a burning need to try it out, we ventured forth under gray skies. After getting our eat on at the Mountain View Diner in Gold Bar, we started to drive, trying to find a place to fish. Unfortunately, the river was high, fast and muddy, and while we were driving, the weather set in. Now, when you go fishing in the winter in Washington, you expect to get rained on, so when it started to rain a little we weren't too concerned. We became worried when the rain got heavy, and then downright concerned when the hail and lightning started. The one bit of luck we had then was that we hadn't gotten out of the car yet since we hadn't found castable water. So we drove around a bit more, marveling at the hail and high water. This is a chart depicting river flows. We fished the day highlighte...

It's happened. I've lived and fished in the Northwest long enough and have heard enough testimonials to have finally entered another part of the fly-fishing world: that of the two-handed fly rod. For those of you who aren't aware, most fly-fishing is done with a single handed rod, using some variation of the standard cast. The rods are anywhere from six to ten feet, and are, obviously, held with one hand. This is what I assume a majority of people think of when they hear fly-fishing or casting: Two handed fly rods are a whole different ballgame. Ranging from eleven feet to fifteen on average, these rods are big. There are rods that are even longer (twenty feet!) but we won't go into those today. The two-handed rods originated on the river Spey in Scotland, and the technique of casting them is called Spey Casting.  Spey casting doesn't require as much space behind the caster as regular, single-handed casting does, so in places like Washington, where there is...