Well, I finally managed to get my first sea run cutthroat out in the salt on the fly today (first sea run in the salt period actually). After work I headed down to Picnic Point to fish the incoming tide, starting off with an olive beadhead woolly bugger. Within a few casts of starting I briefly hooked into something that was either a trout or a smolt (probably around 8"), but it was nothing more than a bump and a head shake or two. I kept casting the bugger and I think I got a few more hits before the action slowed on that fly. Around this time I began to see huge schools of bait fish moving through and decided to tie on a brown and orange clouser to better imitate them. I didn't stick with the clouser for long though as I didn't like how it was casting (no hits on it either).

At this point I switched to a chum baby and gave the water a good working over with it but to no effect. Finally I decided to change over to what I think is called a mini minnow. It was basically a short yarn streamer (probably 1.25") predominantly in white and pink with a little olive green. After making this switch I again began to get hits and it seemed that the fish were getting more active as I was seeing the bait start to jump. At around two hours in I noticed some bait jumping just to my right, back up towards shore, so I spun around and fired off a cast back into the shallows. I think I got a good hit on my first cast, and then on the second I was able to get hooked up with a solid sea run cutt. It was probably around 12", but chunky for its length and super feisty. It stopped running and darting for only about 10 seconds during the entire fight. I finally got it up to me but while trying to get a hand on it to quickly stabilize it for a picture, it flopped its last and threw the hook. Oh well. I was happy to get my first sea run in the salt!

Tight lines!

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