Almost everything we write about fishing on this site is about still water. Four private lakes, no state license, bring your own rod, keep most of what you catch. The Yakima River is the other half of the story, and it is a completely different proposition: moving water, a state license, barbless hooks, no bait, and almost nothing goes home with you.
It also runs straight through this valley. The river is impounded a few minutes from our gate to form Lake Easton, and the fishable river begins at the foot of that dam. So guests ask about it constantly, usually after discovering that the rules on the river and the rules on our lakes have nothing to do with each other.
Here is the honest version, with the rules quoted from the people who write them.
The river, in orientation
- Source: Keechelus Lake, about 15 minutes west of us
- Total length: 214 miles — the longest river entirely inside Washington
- Blue Ribbon stretch: Keechelus Dam down to Roza Dam, roughly 65 miles
- Nearest bank access from our gate: about 5 minutes
- Rules below Easton Dam: year-round, trout catch-and-release, selective gear
- Rules above Easton Dam: Saturday before Memorial Day to October 31 only
- License: required — this is public water, not our lakes
- Parking pass: Discover Pass or a WDFW Vehicle Access Pass at WDFW sites
Wikipedia's entry on the river records the headline fact that most visitors do not know: "The Yakima River is the only Blue Ribbon river in Washington state." It runs 214 miles from Keechelus Lake, at 2,520 feet, to the Columbia, draining 6,150 square miles on the way, and it is the longest river entirely within the state.
Not all 214 miles are the trout fishery. The Evening Hatch, an Ellensburg outfitter that has guided this water for decades, draws the boundary plainly: "The Blue Ribbon fishery begins at Keechelus Dam and ends at Roza dam," a stretch "approximately 65 miles long," with "another 80 miles before entering the Columbia River" below Roza. Easton sits inside the top ten miles of that 65.
The rule split at Easton Dam — this is the part people get wrong
Two completely different regulations meet at the dam a few minutes from here, and arriving on the wrong side of it in the wrong month is the most common mistake made on this water.
Below the dam, the river is open all year and you release the trout. Washington's special rules for the Yakima from the Roza Access Area boat launch up to 400 feet below Easton Dam read: trout, "Year-round Catch-and-release. Selective gear rules"; whitefish, "Dec. 1-Last Day of Feb."; other game fish, "Year-round Statewide min. size/daily limit. Selective gear rules." That single row covers essentially every float and every wade an angler based in Easton is going to make.
Above the dam, it is a short seasonal section with different rules. For the water from Easton Dam up to Keechelus Dam, the same rule table lists trout as open "Sat. before Memorial Day-Oct. 31" with "Statewide min. size/daily limit. Except: Release cutthroat trout and rainbow trout," and other game fish on the same dates. In practice that means the upper few miles toward Keechelus are shut for most of the year, including the whole winter catch-and-release season happening a mile downstream.
Both rows come from the state's published Columbia Basin rivers special rules, and both change by emergency rule more often than any printed source can keep up with. Check the current table before you fish, every time.
What "selective gear rules" actually means
This phrase does more work than any other three words on the Yakima, and it is a legal definition rather than a suggestion. Washington's regulation definitions put it as: "Gear is limited to artificial flies with barbless single-point hooks or lures with barbless single-point hooks and bait is prohibited." A barbless hook is "a hook from which all barbs have been deleted when manufactured, filed off, or pinched down."
So: no worms, no PowerBait, no treble-hooked plugs, and barbs pinched down with pliers before you start. Guests who fish our lakes with bait in the morning cannot carry that same rig to the river in the afternoon. Our guide to whether you need a fishing license on a private lake in Washington explains why the two sets of rules diverge the moment you leave the property line.
License and parking
You need a Washington fishing license on the river — there is no exemption that travels with you from a private water. Most of the public bank and boat access on this stretch is WDFW water access, and per WDFW's parking page, "A Discover Pass is also required on WDFW lands -- including water access areas, wildlife areas, and campgrounds -- unless you already have a Vehicle Access Pass." The Vehicle Access Pass "is issued at no charge by WDFW with the purchase of any annual hunting, trapping, or fishing license," so an annual license usually solves the parking problem too. Otherwise the Discover Pass runs $11.50 for a day or $51.50 annually including the processing fee.
Where to actually get on the water from here
Access improves the farther downstream you go, and the reach names used locally are worth knowing before you call a shop for a report. The Evening Hatch divides the fishery into the Upper Yakima proper, the Upper Flatlands, the "Upper Canyon- East Cle Elum to the Diversion Dam," "The Farmlands-Diversion Dam to Wilson Creek," and "The Lower Canyon-Wilson Creek to Roza."
Right in Easton (about 5 minutes). The river below the dam is wadeable pocket water, small by Yakima standards and nothing like the canyon. Lake Easton State Park one exit east has river frontage — its lakeshore loop runs onto a Riverside trail beside the Yakima and crosses it on a trail bridge — so the walk-and-look option costs nothing but a Discover Pass.
South Cle Elum and East Cle Elum (15 to 20 minutes). This is where boats go in. The launch at the SR-970/SR-10 junction east of Cle Elum, generally called the East Cle Elum or Teanaway launch, is the standard put-in for the Upper Canyon float, with the take-out at the Thorp Highway bridge about 12 river miles down. Both are WDFW access, both need the pass, and the stretch is the most remote water on the upper river. Our guide to things to do in Cle Elum covers what is open in town at either end of a float day.
Wade access without a boat. The old railroad grade that parallels the river is the quietest way to reach bank water on foot. The Palouse to Cascades Trail out of Easton runs 11.9 miles east toward South Cle Elum and crosses the Yakima on the way, which puts a lot of river within walking distance of a trailhead five minutes from our front gate.
The flows are managed, and that governs your season
The single most important thing to understand about the Yakima is that it is an irrigation river. Reservoir operators set the flow, not the weather, and the schedule is published.
Every year the Bureau of Reclamation runs what it calls the flip-flop: an "annual 'flip-flop' operation, beginning in mid-August, to aid in successful spawning and incubation of chinook salmon eggs and to improve winter reservoir storage." Flows out of Keechelus and Cle Elum drop while Kachess and Rimrock come up, because the operation "maintains relatively low, more natural flows, which are important for chinook salmon spawning in the upper Yakima, Cle Elum, and Bumping rivers" (Reclamation, August 2024). For an angler that means the upper river drops substantially over a couple of weeks in late summer, turning a high, pushy river into a low, clear, technical one.
Reclamation publishes the daily numbers itself through the Yakima Hydromet network, where the station listed as "EASW == YAKIMA RIVER AT EASTON WA." is the gauge for the water nearest us. Check it before you load the truck. Irrigation rivers also change fast enough to be genuinely dangerous to wade on the wrong day, and the Upper Canyon carries log jams that move between seasons.
Species and seasons
The Evening Hatch lists "Rainbows, Cutthroat and Brook Trout as well as a few Bull Trout" in the system, and notes that "The Upper Yakima is predominantly Rainbows with a small mixture of Cutthroat." Below the dam they all go back regardless, so this is a question of what you are casting to rather than what you are keeping.
Their seasonal shorthand matches what we hear from guests: Skwala stoneflies, blue-winged olives, and March browns in spring; caddis, yellow sallies, golden stones, and hoppers through summer; small nymphs and tiny blue-winged olives in fall; midges in winter. The winter fishery is real — the river below the dam never closes — but it is a cold, slow, technical business, and the whitefish season from December 1 through the last day of February is the honest answer for anyone who wants to bend a rod in January.
Where we fit, honestly
We are not a river operation. There is no guide service here, no fly shop, no tackle sales, no shuttle, and no fish-cleaning station — Easton's commercial district is one gas station and a restaurant, so the nearest fly shop is in Ellensburg or Cle Elum. Our four private lakes are still water, they are stocked, they require no license, and they are a different sport from what is described above. We say that plainly because the two get conflated in guest emails every summer.
What we are is a place to sleep five minutes from the top of a Blue Ribbon river. We are at 3000 U-Fish Rd off I-90 Exit 63 on 54 private acres about 80 minutes from Seattle, with cabins, a 14-person lodge, 22 full-hookup RV sites, and tent camping — and we are open year-round, which matters on a river whose best technical fishing happens in months when most of the corridor's campgrounds are locked.
A reasonable trip from here: fish the private lakes with the kids in the morning, drive 15 minutes east and wade the canyon in the evening. Our broader fishing guide for Easton covers the lakes — Kachess, Keechelus, Lake Easton — that fill out the rest of the map, and the statewide picture is in our roundup of fishing lodges in Washington state. There is plenty else to do near Easton on the days the river is too high to fish.