As stated yesterday I saw the plan to fish some private trout water near home through today. Called Sershen, asked if he wanted to come scout the stream with me and sure enough he did. We got on site at 12noon and fished until about 2:30pm. We parked upstream from the area I wanted to scout and planned to hike in until we met a confluence between the main branch of the stream and a feeder brook. I didn’t even put my rod together, kept everything in my pack and my eyes open as we made our way downstream. Although I picked a few rocks for bugs I did not spend too much time taking photo’s as I found mainly what I saw yesterday. Today was more about the push to see the plan through, make it to the confluence, work it back up stream, don’t doddle and thats what we did.
The trout stream wound down into a highly wooded/forested area that clearly presented a challenge to a fly fisherman looking to use his backcast. As we hiked downstream we noticed trout rising but I had a feeling they were striking caddisfly larva, I could be completely wrong on this after knowing that none of the trout struck my pupa pattern but they did take the Caddisfly larva pattern I put as the lead fly in my two fly rig. Sershen and I have worked out a rythem and we quickly hopped from one opportunity to the next, it’s nice to get into the groove and leap frog your partner. Working these smaller streams in the summer months can be difficult, in that the plants are already pushing head height which affects both your travel speed but also your approach to most casting situations on the stream. I lost the first few strikes I had nymphing, I went blind with no indicator and little to no weight for three reasons. 1st, a ton of instream foliage, 2nd the clarity of the stream combined with the low water level made for spooky fish and 3rd because the fish were holding high in the water column for the most part.
Sershen swung a Bugger and I fished my two fly rig on our way upstream. We got on a section that held a 5-6ft. deep hole, I was up first and with Sershen as a lookout I managed to take a tiny brown holding high in the water at the head of the pool. Sershen at bat, Bugger off and on the last strip I watched his line just dive, I saw the ever familiar flash, the orange belly and it was on, Sershen had to turn it’s head quickly before it buried itself in a field of deep foliage. This was the fish we came to see and it was excellent, the picture says it all, after the release we both just smiled. I gave it ago with Sershens rig to see what I could come up with and on the third cast I had a decent brown on but it popped off before we could see it.
We headed further upstream and fishing to a few rising trout I lost my rig getting it stuck on a tree branch on the other side of the seam, rather than disturb the hole and retrieve my flies I broke off and tied only the single Caddisfly larva pattern on and swung again, expecting the shallower stuff to hold only small fish would be a mistake, I love fishing no indicator nymph rigs upstream and tight lining them as it drifts to my feet, the strikes can be intense, seeing your leader dart, other times they can be so subtle you never notice. I made one last cast on this spot and expecting an 8in trout I was given a fat 14in Brown that ran straight towards me, awesome.
We fished a few more spots on our way back to the truck, we picked up a few more, I got one on and it tangled itself up in the weeds, sure enough once I had the trout on and backed away a bit Sershen was hooking his trout and we had two on at once, I even had to walk under his line because my fish was stuck to the side in the weeds as his trout was running him downstream, before I could get mine off he had already released his and was working on the next. We stopped and talked to the landowners for a few minutes, I introduced myself, gave them contact information and was given permission to come back and fish whenever I felt the itch. I would say this was better than I was expecting, it could turn into my lunch breaks during the summer.
