Littleriver -- Fishing Granite Creek, Taylor River and Pratt River by MF Snoqualmie River

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Littleriver -- I was wondering if you have fished Granite creek up where the gated trail continues to the creek. I heard lots of brookies are in there. Also, what has been your experiences with fishing both the Pratt and Taylor River systems? The Pratt is only accessed by fording the MF, but at what flow would I be able to get across? It's running around 700cfs right now, and I think 500 would be more ideal for someone with waders. I am more interested in Granite Creek and some of the ponds and lakes up there. Thompson lake is up there right?

[littleriver]

To be perfectly honest Rutt, I've never fished the middle fork but I've done a lot of hiking there and have fished some of the lakes in the area.


Granite and Pratt creeks are along the lower part of the river and it looks very steep in there... I would definitely make a checkout hike in before committing myself by taking all the fishing gear...


Some years back, before I discovered snow shoeing, I would make at least one winter conditioning trip to the taylor river because it's low and hikeable for most of the winter months. This trail provides good access to the stream and it kind of looks fishy but I've never dropped a lure to check it out or even read the regs to see how it's managed.

Driving over the taylor river bridge and continuing up the middle fork you follow a very bad dirt road about 5 miles or so to the Hester Lake trailhead. I've never been up to Hester but I've parked at the trailhead and walked down the trail toward the middle fork and, as I recall, there is a bridge there that accesses a trail that runs along the south side of the middle fork all the way back down to where the taylor river comes in and all the way up to the dutch miller gap trailhead. I followed this trail a few years back and it seems to be in good shape for the mile or so each way from the bridge that I walked it.....

The river, as I recall, is very rocky and doesn't look too fishable right there but I hiked along it several decades ago from Dutch Miller Gap down to the turnoff to Snow Lake.. the turnoff to snow lake is 3 or 4 miles upstream from the Hester trailhead bridge...... I can recall seeing nice trout in some of the runs but there was no time to fish because we were behind schedule and sort of lost both at the same time.....


Now, just the other side of Dutch Miller Gap there's a nice lake called "Ivanhoe"... that one is loaded with small trout.. mostly brookies as I recall.... you can see them swimming and loosely grouped schools and they hit pretty much anything that looks like the small dark insect life they feed on there....

About 4 miles north and a little east of the dutchmiller gap trailhead (the end of the middle fork road) there a neat lake called "Chetwood"... It's a buchwhack whether you try to get there from the west fork of the foss river trailhead or the dutchmiller trailhead and I've never been there, but I've talked with guys who've trekked in and they say it holds some very nice trout..... but I wouldn't go in there unless I was very "mountain bushwhack" experienced. One needs to learn how to tell when the route they are taking is headed toward a 1,000 foot plus vertical drop..... I've almost slipped over a few of those kinds of geographical features in my time and the contour lines around chetwood are very close together.. that means you'd probably need to make 2 or 3 exploratory trips in to figure out a route.


Now the middle fork looks nice and the taylor looks nice but, IMHO, the north fork is much better.. I've never fished the north fork either but have talked with a few fly fishermen I've met while driving along the north fork road and they seem to be very happy with the opportunity there. My recommendation would be to figure out how to get up to what's called "spur gate #10" (or something like that)... about 15 or 20 road miles past that point theres' a large parking area just before the road crosses "Sunday Creek".. Sometimes there will be 3 or 4 cars parked there and they will be flyfishers working the north fork.. looks like there are trails and stuff going down to the north fork from the parking area. Sunday creek has some nice runs too, but the guys I've talked to there always seem to be working the north fork.

This parking lot also serves as the trailhead to Loch Katrine and Lake Phillipa. I've been up to both. Katrine is a waste of time but Phillipa has a lot of smaller trout in it. Easy to catch fish but a brutal hike along a lightly traveled but followable bushwhacking trail.

IMHO the best fishing in that area is Sunday Lake. You go a mile or two past the sunday creek bridge and you'll see a blocked road going off to the right and room to park a couple of cars.. keep your waders on top of the pack because you need to wade through a beaver pond and across sunday creek to get up to the lake.... but this is the richest and most productive hike in trout lake I've ever fished except for maybe Castle down in Cowlitz County.... lots of bug life along the weedy shorelines here and the fish are usually feeding on some kind of hatch...

gotta have a float tube though, not much shore access. Just kind of kick around the lake dragging a floating fly line with a 9 foot leader with about a 2 or 3 x tippet with a smaller (say #8) green carey special or equivalent and you will have lots of action. I don't think I've ever caught anything over about 10" there, but action was always fast and the memories good.

But back to the north fork. A lot of the land along the north fork seems to be privately owned but you have to cross a bridge over it to access the north fork road and the lower part of the this river looks like it could sustain decent populations of larger fish. You are above snoqualmie falls here so there isn't going to be an anadromous action and, though the river is large enough to float here, you want to be careful not to end up accidently going over the falls. If you could find some access and figure out some good runs along this part of the river I think you would be rewarded with some very nice trout. And, unlike the lower middle fork, it doesn't seem to get much attention from the sport angling community.