Sand Flea Media

Bycatch

1 min read

Wooden staircase descending through a Pacific Northwest forest of ferns and young maples toward the beach below.

I went to a Puget Sound beach looking for my first sea run cutthroat. Outgoing tide, mostly cloudy, steady south wind.

Fly rod and stripping basket leaned against a bleached driftwood log on the gravel beach, gray Puget Sound water and a distant headland behind.

I worked the beach from slack high toward low.

A small sculpin held by the lip, mottled brown body and oversized pectoral fin against the gray water below.

First, a sculpin.

A small silver perch with faint yellow bars held in hand above clear shallow water and submerged rocks.

Then a perch.

Then I hooked something larger that actually put up a fight. I figured I had cracked the code and hooked into my first cutthroat.

A 12-inch flounder held over a stripping basket tangled with yellow fly line, its mottled brown topside catching the light.

I had to laugh when I saw this ugly brown pancake with two crooked, bulging eyes.

View from the angler seated on a cobble beach, waders and wading boots in the foreground, the creek mouth and a distant headland under a flat gray sky.

No cutthroat today. I need to tie up some better flies and learn how to read a beach.

Unsure where to go next. That’s the report.

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