Chris,
When I lived in Port Angeles, the Elwah had C&R on the kings so I fished for them quite often in late August/September. A friend of mine and I used to target late kings in November early December on one of the peninsula rivers too.
As sinktip said, the flies had to be right in their face, pretty much dead-drifted or the kings ignored them. This means you are going to lose quite a few flies to rocks so use easy to tie flies. My friend and I found that hot fuschia bunny leeches tied on a #3 AJ heavy or a #4 regular salmon iron and fished like you would a stonefly nymph for trout on a downstream cast, or a small #6 Rajah (hot pink tail, silver rear body, hot pink front body, silver rib, hot pink hackle, white wing) tied with a sparse wing produced more grabs than anything else we used.
Also, the grab is really more of the line stops in a manner similar to the way trout pick up a nymph. They ignored our flies more often than they grabbed them, and the best chance of hooking one was when fresh, bright fish were in the river.
Good luck.
When I lived in Port Angeles, the Elwah had C&R on the kings so I fished for them quite often in late August/September. A friend of mine and I used to target late kings in November early December on one of the peninsula rivers too.
As sinktip said, the flies had to be right in their face, pretty much dead-drifted or the kings ignored them. This means you are going to lose quite a few flies to rocks so use easy to tie flies. My friend and I found that hot fuschia bunny leeches tied on a #3 AJ heavy or a #4 regular salmon iron and fished like you would a stonefly nymph for trout on a downstream cast, or a small #6 Rajah (hot pink tail, silver rear body, hot pink front body, silver rib, hot pink hackle, white wing) tied with a sparse wing produced more grabs than anything else we used.
Also, the grab is really more of the line stops in a manner similar to the way trout pick up a nymph. They ignored our flies more often than they grabbed them, and the best chance of hooking one was when fresh, bright fish were in the river.
Good luck.
