Just can’t get enough salt water fly fishing – a balmy 54 degrees air temp. today on Puget Sound and it was time to hit the beach for Sea-Run Cutthroat. How often does that happen in January? Well, I can’t complain and it certainly beats freezing cold temperatures that many people throughout the country are battling. 
The fish don’t care what the outside temperature is doing. In their Puget Sound environment the water temperature is still hovering around 50 degrees. We had a great day chasing cutthroat and also had some unexpected encounters with some nice sized resident coho salmon. They tend to fight a little harder that the cutthroat, and of course were carefully released.
We had a lot of of short takes today, and missed encounters. Sometimes Sea-Run cutts are just flat out nippy and just don’t want to commit to hammering your fly. We did well on rabbit strip sculpin patterns today, particularly light pink.
One technique that worked well was, three short strips and then a pause allowing the fly to sink. They like it on the sink, and the strike happened frequently there.
Gotta love Western Washington weather – it’s fishing season year round!