Fly Fishing in Washington

Washington runs the full table: ocean charters out of Westport and Ilwaco for salmon, halibut, and lingcod; protected water in Puget Sound and the San Juan Islands; and the steelhead rivers that made the Olympic Peninsula famous: the Hoh, the Sol Duc, the Skagit. East of the mountains, the Okanogan Highlands hold trophy trout lakes that fish nothing like the coast. Few states hand a guided angler this many genuinely different trips.

The Cascade Range is the dividing line, and it matters. West of the crest, rain feeds the rainforest rivers and drives the salmon and steelhead runs, which stack up in fall and winter. East of it, the country dries out and the fishing shifts to reservoirs and lakes: bass, walleye, and trout around Moses Lake and the Spokane River system. A guide on either side has built a program around that side's water, and the trips reflect it.

The surprise is how close the fishing sits to the cities. From Seattle or Tacoma, salmon water in Puget Sound and the rivers feeding it are within an hour's drive. Along the southern border, the Columbia River runs sturgeon, salmon, and steelhead at a scale few American rivers match, with guide operations working out of Vancouver, Kalama, and Astoria. You don't have to go far in Washington to fish well, you just have to pick a direction.