CHIMACUM — Respected outdoors writer and fly-fishing guide Doug Rose has died after a battle with cancer.
He was 63 when he died March 11.
Rose was born in Michigan and settled in the North Olympic Peninsula in the early 1980s.
“I feel much more at home here than anywhere I’ve ever been,” Rose told the Peninsula Daily News in 2011.
“There’s always a bunch of things I want to do here, so I’ve never felt like I’ve caught up, and I rarely go anywhere else.”
After moving to the Peninsula, Rose lived mostly in East Jefferson County, including his final residence in Chimacum, but he also recently had lived in Forks.
Rose wrote three highly regarded books devoted to fly fishing on the Peninsula — Fly Fishing the Olympic Peninsula, Steelhead Fly Fishing on the Olympic Peninsula: The Color of Winter and Fly-Fishing Guide to the Olympic Peninsula — and was the editor of Washington River Maps & Fishing Guide.
Rose also served as an outdoors columnist for the PDN in the late 1990s and wrote articles for magazines such as Fly Fisherman, American Angler, Flyfishing and Tying Journal and Northwest Fly Fishing.
As a fly-fishing guide, Rose’s specialties were catching steelhead in West End rivers and saltwater cutthroat in Hood Canal and Admiralty Inlet.
Rose publicly announced he had cancer in what would be the final entry on his Doug Rose Flyfishing blog in early February.
He wrote that the cancerous tumor had “spread to a couple areas” but added that he and his doctors were optimistic about his chances for recovery.
Rose hoped to return to guiding fishing trips by the spring or summer.
In the interest of privacy, Rose’s family and friends declined to comment, but a family spokesman, who did not want to be identified, said there currently are no plans for a memorial service.
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Reporter Lee Horton can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5152, or at lee.horton@peninsuladailynews.com.
