The Yakima River provides fly anglers with a great deal of fish to be caught; ranging from spring-run Chinook salmon to smallmouth bass.

However, the fish of choice in this big western river is the rainbow trout.

Rainbows can be fished out of the Yakima River every month out of the year. With each month, new flies hatch and new places to hide are found.

The Yakima River is split into two different sections; the upper and lower.

The upper section of the river runs 75 miles, from the Easton Dam to the Roza Dam.

The upper river has a wide range of cold water trout: including rainbows, cutthroat and cutbows. Brook trout and Bull trout are also there, but are much more rare than the others.

The lower river is considered to begin at the Roza dam and continues all the way until the mouth of the Columbia River.

The lower river is geared more towards fish that require warmer water, but the rainbows are still in abundance.

The lower Yakima is suited better for fly anglers in drift boats due to the fact that there are few places to get off and fish from the bank. The upper is floatable as well, but presents more opportunities to get off and fish from the bank of the river.

“I enjoy the upper river for sure, because I’m competing with fewer anglers and have had more success up there,” local fly angler Braxton Mackenzie said.

This fall has been unique for fly fishing due to all the warm weather Kittitas County has been having recently. During the fall, on an average year, trout will usually begin to pod up in the deeper waters of the river, but things have been changing.

“I’ve been finding fish all over the place: in the riffles, those big river flats, the big riffle dumps and around the boulders,” Worley Bugger owner, Steve Worley, said. “Until we get those first few cold snaps where the nights drop down into the freezing levels, I don’t think we are going to see a transition period for fish.”

Due to temperature drops in the water, the trout’s main source of food, flies, have stopped hatching, leaving more eggs to be eaten by the fish.

“Fish are the exact opposite of us…Me and you go to McDonalds and chow down a Big Mac and fries, we got to go to the gym to burn this off,” Worley said. “If a fish goes up and eats a big meal it just wants to sit there and rely on these calories for the next six to eight hours.”

According to Worley, dry fly fishing really drives the sport more than any other type of fly fishing.

“Dry fly fishing is my favorite, my favorite fly would have to be a parachute adams,” Mackenzie said. “Always my go to for an evening hatch. Easy, and a small fly for the trout to hit.”

Heading into the month of November, trout on the Yakima start to feed on bait fish or even the flesh from the decomposing salmon.

Streamer fishing becomes more popular in the winter with fly anglers because fishers can mimic the motions of a bait fish with a streamer.

There are a few reasons the Yakima River has produced such a healthy amount of trout and anglers throughout the years.

The Yakima has been a selective gear fishery for nearly 25 years; regulations are single barbless hooks, no bait fishing and catch-and-release only.

The most important element has been wild species of fish cohabitating and reproducing.

It’s been 25 years since the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife has stopped putting hatchery raised fish into the Yakima, which directly benefited the wild species.

“Man cannot duplicate what mother nature can do better,” Worley said.