Just back from a few days at the Stehekin Valley Ranch, a comfortable, good
bed/shower and great food kind of place. Did a bit of painting, hiking and
fishing. The Stehekin River comes off the main spine of the Northern
Cascades, mostly wilderness, and is at the end of Lake Chelan. You get
there in 3 hours by the slow boat, or 2 by the louder boat or float plane.
No roads in or out but 23 miles of "road" on valley floor makes for great
access. The ranch is run by the pioneer Courtney family. Stehekin has 85
year round, a 2 room school, and one satellite phone.

The Lake and River are incredibly clean . . . and infertile. So fish in the
river are rare but can be of decent size. The river was running cloudy from
glacier melt but not real bad and was full of beautiful spawning Kokanee. I
fished 4 hours on one day and an evening on another day. I was fishing the
river about 9 miles up from the mouth where the river is big and the pools
spaced far apart. The river was at about 600cfs.

Success is relative here and I was relatively successful the first day. In
the sunlight a thin hatch of what I call pale evening duns or light cahills,
and little clouds of BWOs came off until the sun passed the ridge. Then a
steady hatch of October caddis and another of microcaddis started. In this
river an October caddis is one hunk of food. The fish were in the tail out
and lip of the pools. Never more than 2-3 fish per pool and only 1-2 passes
allowed I landed 2 very decent fish 13-15", and a few smaller ones. The
fish are very strong for their size and very deep bodied. The take was
usually as I "hopped" an orange stimulator to mimic an ovipositing female
caddis. I lost what I think was my best fish when it came up and porpoised
straight down, taking the fly with him.

Mostly painted this trip. Painting horses is hard for me but the ranch has a
beautiful herd of Fjord horses started by the family's father the legendary
backcountry packer, Ray Courtney. Ray was killed when he fell trying to
untangle 2 of his horses but the sons continue the family's tradition. I got
a decent acrylic sketch of the herd in their main meadow, a couple of the
mountain and lake front, and 2 "thru the trees" paintings. Not bad for 4
days.

It was great to be in the valley this time of year. Big end of year
party/feed at the bakery seemed to pull in all the locals, ranch guests, and
seasonals. The orchard was full of their antique varieties, and the bears
were reportedly happy on their apple/Kokanee regimen. Hiked up Agnes Gorge
to see the falls and the Glacier Peaks, good conversation with a group of
Tacoma Mountaineer sexagenarians, and met some neat folks from Seattle.
Slept like a baby to the sound of the irrigation sprinklers all night, and
woke to the pounding of the herd coming onto the pasture at dawn.

Dave