Fishing Journal-Week 12

May 7

I only made it out to the river once this week but it was a pretty good trip. The fish were still not up feeding on the surface despite a pretty good hatch of caddis, and some Blue Wing Olives so I stuck to nymphing.

There were basically two nice runs where I stopped to fish. The upper was a very short riffle that dumped into a short but very deep hole. I know there are a lot of fish in there but I haven't ever had a lot of luck fishing what looks like a very productive run. I did get one good tug as my flies swung up at the end of a drift but it was gone as soon as it came. After about five minutes I felt I had covered this spot about as good as I could and moved down to the lower shallower but wider and longer run. This riffle had a lot more fishable water and I knew it would take some time to really work it over and cover it sufficiently.

I started up high and worked down focusing on working around all the submerged structure but had not even a tick on the indicator. I was at the bottom of the run where the current really slows and about ready to head up to the top and work down through it again, when my indicator darted sideways. I set the hook on a small but fiesty little brown. I quickly landed the 12 incher and went back to work in the slower water. It was hard to know just where the fish would be holding in the wide flat water where spotting structure was tough. A couple casts later though I caught another fish in this slower water. This one was a little bigger. Maybe 15 or 16 inches. I continued to work the wide current as best I could and was having no more luck when I decided it was time to go up and try the top of the riffle again before I left.Good move it turns out. As I waded up into the shallow water I thought I saw a fish porpoise in the ankle deep water on the inside of the main swift current. It was a little softer water but there wasn't much of it so I wondered if it was really a fish or if I had just seen some debris tumble through the current. I figured it couldn't hurt to throw a cast up there anyway. My indicator was rigged much too deep for the shallow current here and I failed to take time to adjust it so when I saw the indicator stop in it's drift I thought for sure it had snagged some mossy rocks. As I brought the rod tip up though the shallow water exploded and an angry brown charged from its shallow lie and headed across and downstream from me into the heavy current where it could really get the advantage on me. I ran downstream with it to keep from loosing too much leverage and finally caught up with it and worked it into the softer water near shore. This was another nice fish much like many of the fish here. I netted and released my third fish of my lunch break and headed back to the office refreshed.