Yakima River Fishing Report – May 22, 2023

This last week was hot, like sit in your basement, crank up the air conditioning, and drink a mojito hot—but so was the fishing. On the upper-river we’re seeing decent caddis hatches mixed in with a rogue salmon fly or two, and now our yellow sallies are starting to show their wonderful red arses.

This coming week will yield cooler temps, which will surely cause us to debate if we should wear waders come morning, but alas… fishing should remain solid despite internal conflicts of to wader, or not to wader (that is the question). All said the river is low, hovering around 1,200 cfs. Dry fly fishing has been fair, and the subsurface game has been solid. We’ve been getting quite a few questions about launches, so: 1. You can take the main channel to take out at state. 2. The log jam below state is still open after our bump of high water, though tight.  3. The Cle Elum is—as I write this—too skinny to float.

Have fun and be safe out there!

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