Hey, Rob, thanks for the report. Try fishing up there with a sliding float. I fish a lot of sliding floats with an adjustable bobber stop. The kind of bobber stops that I use are made by Thill and they consist of a hollow plastic tube with floss nail knotted on the tube. All you have to do is slide the tube up your line, slide the nail knotted floss off the tube onto your line, and then put a bead on and then your float. Be sure and ditch the little plastic tube that the bobber stop comes on when you're done with it as it is not needed. You can simply adjust the bobber stop by moving it up or down your mainline. I fished some 20 foot deep holes for springers with this setup last week and did well. The nail knotted floss bobber stop will pass through your guides and you can set it up to fish as deep as you like w/o interfering with casting. If you really need to get the lure down to the fish, then use one of the larger dink floats with about 3" of pencil lead or two 1/4 oz. sliding egg sinkers. I fished some crazy deep and fast water on the Wind river with this setup and outfished just about everybody. Weight your float so that only about an inch or so is above water once the weight and lure get down. Unfortunately, in crowded areas sometimes the whole beach will be driftfishing in which you have to join and driftfish too or you'll catch hell because your float will be in everybody's way. The floats progress downstream faster or slower than driftfishing, depending on the current and can really screw up a bank full of driftfishermen.

You can also try using a smaller float and 1/4 oz. jig, no weight ohter than the jig. The 1/4 jigs will sink fast and you can fish pockets and pools pretty well with them.

I know the area you are talking about below the falls. I'd fish it with a float and stay above the snags. You won't loose that much gear and you can fish jigs and plastic worms effectively. A good rule of thum is to keep your lure a foot or so off the bottom when fishing floats, but fish will often rise several feet to grab a jig or a worm. The Snoqualamie is selective fishery, bait prohibited in the summer so I use jigs most of the time and do ok. Good luck up there.

[ 06-01-2001: Message edited by: Kid Sauk ]