Gaffney Fisheries LLC

The Hoh runs out of the Olympic Rain Forest on the Olympic Peninsula and fishes year round, with winter steelhead from February through April, summer steelhead in August and September, spring Chinook – springers – from March into June, and fall Chinook from July through October. Days are worked from a drift boat, from a power jet sled, or on foot in hip waders, depending on flow and on which run is in the river. A full day is $275 per fisherman, and the emphasis is on an angler learning to hook and land his own fish rather than having it done for him.

Gaffney Fisheries fishes the Humptulips, a river that rises at the base of the wild Olympic mountains and is fed by its east and west forks, from a seventeen-foot custom-made drift boat. The salmon season opens on the first of September and runs through December; steelhead and trout follow from January to an April 15 close, with hatchery steelhead through December and January. Kings average eighteen to twenty-one pounds and coho eight to fourteen, and the guide claims fifteen to twenty-five hookups on a good day. The methods change with the water and the run: diving plugs pulled downstream, eggs and shrimp side-drifted or floated, jigs run through the slots, spoons and spinners cast, back-bouncing, and banana-style plugs back-trolled.

Gaffney Fisheries also runs the Chehalis, which it describes flowing west through Chehalis, Centralia and Elma before it reaches Grays Harbor and the Pacific, and it fishes the deep runs, gravel bars and wooded banks along that course. Coho are worked through fall and into winter with steelhead following as the season moves on, and the river is flagged on the shop’s own front page under what is hot right now for winter steelhead. The neighbouring Satsop, which joins the Chehalis mainstem near Elma, is run off the same card and puts the steelhead window at December through April and the salmon window at September through December, for Chinook, coho and chum. Boats are an eighteen-foot jet sled and a North River drift boat, picked to suit the water on the day, and the rate is 275 dollars per angler for a full day.