Woke up yesterday about 5am and made the 2 hour 45 minute shoot to my favorite leaky tailwater. I was rigged up on the water a couple minutes before 8 at one of my favorite stretches for browns on the river. I fished for about an hour, caught a small brown and hooked a decent fish on a 24 midge dry pattern I was testing. The water was crystal clear and running 186 cfs.
I had to get up the river to meet Bob at 9 so I jumped in the car and booked it upriver. Met up with Bob, who is 45 years my senior and knows more about this river than I know about anything. We chatted a bit and he showed me the bug samples he had collected over the weekend. Caddis were all around as Bob showed me a very nice stretch of water he has access to.
The water this far upstream was very off-color. Since Gathright is leaking, they are drawing down the water to make repairs.
I walked downstream and started back up while Bob collected caddis. I was in a slow meandering stretch that reminded me of a glassy PA limestoner. There were fish rising all along the far bank, keyed in on the caddis. One fish was explosively rising just across from me, I watched caddis after caddis skittering downstream followed by an aggressive take.
I make the perfect cast....nothing. Again, same thing. I watched another fly disappear into the fish's mouth. Ah! I cast upstream and twitched and skitted the fly across the surface. Bam.
I got several in a row doing the same thing. Three rainbows and a small brown.
I fished up, adding a nymph off the back of my caddis. The first one I tried worked extremely well and I had managed a total of 12 fish by the time I was up to where Bob was fishing.
Bob told me to ignore the signs, the new landowners across the way had put them up despite this not being a Crown Grant property. Regardless, Bob had the okay to fish from them as well.
Cheers.
The man working risers. Of the four fish he stood there and worked, he landed two and nicked one.
Bob suggested I head upstream and fish a riffle section. I landed seven more rainbows nymphing it over about 30 minutes.
The color variation in these wild fish always blows me away.
We met back up at the cars, chatted a bit and then headed downstream to what Bob calls "Beatletree Lane" because of the beatles that make the shallow stretch loaded with big browns a little easier. It was dead upon arrival. I hooked a nice brown of maybe 13-14 inches on an experimental caddis pupa I had tied but it threw the hook after an uncharacteristic aerial display. I got a small rainbow shortly after and then lost both of the flies.
Towards dark, there was a very nice cream midge hatch that was quite frustrating despite my having a 4-page fly box loaded with midge patterns. Bob landed a nice 15 1/2 inch brown on a midge emerger and I managed a rainbow and a brown.
At dark, we headed to the cars and chatted a bit. Bob keeps very detailed notes so I had been trying to keep track of things in my head all day. I landed 24 fish throughout the day, my best day on this river numbers-wise. Biggest was 15 with a couple 12 inches and a lot in the 9-10 inch range.
We called it a day and headed our seperate ways.
Hybrid Mode
