A Skagit River Adventure - 1st trip of the Season

by CRAIG WILLIAMS July 13, 2021

Every spring fly fishermen all over the Lower Mainland anxiously await for July 1st. This is the day the beautiful Skagit river opens for fishing. It is closed from Nov 1st to July 1st to allow for undisturbed spawning of the Bull trout and Dolly Varden in fall and the Rainbow Trout in Spring. Most are waiting for the chance to catch one of the large and fiesty rainbows on the dry fly. Others are eager to tempt a powerful Char with a perfectly swung and stripped streamer. What ever your preference, the Skagit will not disappoint.

Set in the beautiful rainforest of the Cascade mountains, the Canadian portion of the river winds down through Manning Park and out through Skagit Valley Provincial Park. Both parks offer plenty of access to its many riffles, pools, and runs . The Manning park section only offers hike access while you can drive to many fishable sections in the Skagit Valley park.

Our crew for this mission was;

Tyler Charles - 50% of Cutts and Bows. Ty prefers hucking streamers and battling the Bulls.

Craig Williams - the other 50% of Cutts and Bows. As much as I like battling the bull trout and Dolly's I tend to find myself mainly tossing dry flies at the rainbows.

Julian Goodman - Part of our circle of fishing friends, Julien is really focused on catching a char on a streamer, but is not afraid to drift a nice caddis fly nymph to entice a rainbow or two.

We met in the parking lot of the Manning park access and geared up.

From there we hiked down the trail for about 45 minutes until we got to our favourite starting run. We spent the day wading the river back up to the parking lot fishing the whole way. We all had many Rainbows to hand and Ty and Julian both landed a nice Bull trout.