Approximate arrival onstream: 9:00am. 100% clean and clear flows containing the same spooky trout, same as the last time I was here just less than a week ago. I wanted another crack at the fish in this stream, this time I came armed with another brain to bounce ideas off. The word for the day would be drift, proper drift. We started by tempting a smaller pod of trout holding in a shallower (3ft) run, using smaller lightly weighted scuds nothing would take, line and flies sent dozens of fish, fish dawning the best camouflage imaginable scrambling for cover. A recurring theme today was the super camo these fish were sporting, if you saw one be sure there were twenty you didn’t. It would serve me better to just trust that something might hold fish and rather than have to peer in, just make my presentation to where the fish may be holding. We hung on a super deep hole
for a while after seeing the shadows below, the fish were again lethargic. I was hoping that due to the overnight low in the region dipping to only 43 degrees that the fish would perhaps be more actively feeding but this was not our observation. Takes were super subtle and several fish were hooked but lost due to this fact. The correct amount of weight and drift were the key to taking these fish, with a super deep (10+ft) dive in a short distance you have to weight heavy and let it go hoping your line may bounce, pull, stop, anything to indicate a fish. Sershen took a 13in Brown with a #14 Pink Scud but after close to an hour I had lost three takes and landed nothing, par for the course for me I suppose.
