Lake Creek, July 11-18, 2004

Another nice Chinook Salmon.

Lake Creek is an Eagle's paradise. Both Bald and Golden Eagles are plentiful.

A very productive stretch of the river for Rainbows. They seemed to like the boulders surrounded by 2-3ft deep water which is good because the river is full of them.

These wild "Leopards" are very bright and colorful. We had good luck with streamers and dry flies. It was too early for egg and flesh patterns. Even nymphs and emergers worked well in the river upstream of the Canyon.

Because of the low water navigating through the rock gardens was a real chore. We had to get out of the raft about six times because there was simply no channel deep enough for our 14ft raft.

Here was our first set of rapids. A good warm-up for what lie ahead.

The first major rapids are a bit tricky. It was continuous rocks for a long time and difficult to pick the best route. I was exhausted at the end of the day and my arms ached. This is the larger of two channels. If the water was higher we could have avoided this rapid and taken the smaller channel on the river right.