Under cloudy skies with the occasional bout of rain and sunshine I fished Sunday. My plan was to return to a stream that I have fished several times before to see how it looked this late in the season. With little to no rain except only recently I was expecting to find low flows, what I wasn’t prepared for was the quadruple threat that made the first stop so challenging. To get a difficulty rating of 8+ combine the following: Extremely low flows, massive amounts of instream vegetation, crystal clear spring water and a micro trout stream often no wider than I can jump, oh then put it in a dense forest with little to no angler traffic. Now were talking.

Having been to this water before and knowing a fair amount about the life in the stream I rigged a Black Wet Fly trailed by a small Baetis nymph. This is a “Micro” trout stream and with the low flows and large amount of veg the fish would be very spooky so I opted to nymph a medium lengthed leader with no indicator. If the leader was too long I would miss every take, too short and the fish would see my fly line before my flies, also look at the pictures of the water, a long leader is just counter productive in such close quarters. I guess I wouldn’t rig anything longer than 8-9ft unless I had the opportunity to fish dries here. Read the rest of this entry »