Fishing Journal Week 1

February 9th

Not many fish rising on the river this day. I had to drive almost all the way to the dam before I found some fish feeding in a very slow stretch of river. They were cruising and feeding on midges so fishing to them was tough as they did not just stick to one feeding lane. There were a couple real toilet bowl flush type rises that made me wonder if their were any Skwalas on the water but I did not see any and did not try any Skwala patterns due to the limited time I had to fish. Only fished about 15 minutes and had no takers.


February 10th

Got to my favorite dry fly run and fish where rising everywhere. I tied on the cdc wing midge but the smallest I had was a #18 and the bugs hatching were much smaller. I got a couple that nosed the fly but I could not ever connect with the hook point. I switched it up to a smaller Griffith's Gnat and had better luck getting fish to nose the fly but still could not get a solid hookup. Very discouraging but I think these fish where pretty wary and did not commit fully to the take on anything that looked suspicious. The run is right along the road and there are fish rising here quite often. They get fished hard.

With about 10 minutes left to fish I switched over to a Skwala pattern. Since I had heard a couple big rises yesterday I thought it was worth a try. I tied on a zebra midge as a dropper and hooked up immediately on the dropper. A nice 15 inch fish with a lot of spunk took the midge at the bottom of a riffly run. It put on a pretty good arial display but was not real hefty or tough to bring in. Then just as I was about to leave my Skwala dipped again further up into the choppy water below the riffle and when I set the hook I knew I was into a nice fish. It did not put up a huge fight but it was heavy and when I brought it in it turned out to be a very healthy looking male with a hook jaw. Measured against my net he was exactly the same length which is 20 inches. Nice fish. Fun day.



February 11th

Hit the run right against the road where I caught a 17 incher last week. Fish where rising in here but I quickly discovered that they seemed to be small fish. All about the same length from 10-14 inches. They were all spunky and put on good ariel displays but lacked much heft. Caught 5 fish in about a 4 foot x 4 foot area on the near edge of the tailout in a line of foam. It was fun seeing how many fish I could yank out of that hole but wish I could have gotten into something a little larger. Oh well a fun way to spend the lunch hour.

Also saw the first BWO of 2010 today on that river. Right above the riffle where I caught all these fish I noticed a fish begin to rise as I was getting ready to leave. I assumed it was on midges so I tied on a CDC wing adult midge and made a cast. My leader got twisted on one of my first casts and the big tangled ball of leader, line and fly put the fish down for good. As I stood there waiting for a few minutes to see if he would begin to feed again I noticed a bug that appeared to have a mayfly profile on the water, but figured it must be a midge sitting up high. As it drifted right down to me though I could see it was a BWO cripple that hadn't quite made it free of its nymphal shuck. I did not have time to tie on a Sparkle dun but I look forward to the next few weeks when, if things continue to warm, we should see some pretty good BWO hatches especially on those overcast days.