A couple days on the river

[Christopheraaron]

Sunday I got a text from Dundassteelheader, asking if I wanted to go out for brook trout, already being on my river for 2 days naturally I said hell yes! Fishing was tough this weekend with the cold front, on Sunday there was a massive hatch of hendricksons on the river I fished which made for a 30+ fish day with good numbers of fish over 11", but for whatever reason overnight the fish completely disappeared.

 

We got to the river at around 8:30 and started where I had landed most of my fish the day before, we fished it with dries, nymphed it and threw spinners though it without a sniff. So we headed down to the better morning spot, where the sun first hits the water and fish are most active in the morning, not even a fish sighted. Ok I said there's one more pool in this area where we should be able to sight fish to some fish, sure enough there were fish sitting there eating something (my guess is hendrickson nymphs or chironomids). The only problem with this pool is that it's upwards of 8ft deep and there is no room to get your fly down if the fish aren't rising. After 15 minutes of failed nymphing we decided it might be more productive to head downstream and try for the bigger resident browns.

 

Neither of us had fished this area before so it was an exploratory mission which yielded terrific results, I would post pics of the area but it's so close to a road I would be worried someone would recognize it. After just making my first swing through a nice little cut I hammered this small 11" or so brown.

 

 

A trip upstream gave me one more fish (a little bigger) hooked but not landed. We quickly discovered that our flies and setups were way undergunned for these waters and with only those 2 fish hooked we headed back upstream to see if the brookies had come out now that there was some cloud cover. There were now a few hendricksons flying about along with small fish rising, and when I say small I mean too small to even consider eating a #14. We picked off a few little guys and tried everything we could think of to get bigger fish but it was not to be. Sean still had to get back home so he called it a day while I stayed to see what I could salvage of the day.

 

At around 4pm the rain finally hit, and so did the fish! Even with next to no bug activity fish were rising all over the place, but they were extremely picky. The only things I was able to get them on were #14 quill body adam's and sparse #16 parachutes, these are the results.

 

 

Now to get a little off track and go on a rant. I would say that the area I fish is one of the most popular areas around for citiots to go on the weekend, every day I am asked at least 10 times what I'm fishing for, have to retrieve 5 soccer balls and I constantly have to put up with kids throwing stones in the water while their parents watch. That I can deal with, but this is what I can't. A guy comes over to me, around 30 years old I'd say, asks what I'm fishing for, what they're eating, not anything strange. He leaves, and arrives 20 minutes later with a 9' steelhead rod and a box of worms! I should clarify that I am fishing a no kill zone, with no organic bait. Before he can even start another person tells him the regs, he says he wasn't aware of them. So he throws on a pink steelhead worm under a massive drennan float and starts dropping it right on top of the rising fish (and over my line)! Not five minutes later there are two of them doing it! By now every single fish is spooked, so I left and came back ten minutes later when the both of them had given up. I really don't miss steelheading at all.

 

Anyways, another hour went by, I caught a couple more mid sized fish, missed a couple of decent ones, any then the rain came back. I couldn't really track my 16 dry fly anymore to I switched up to the fly I am most ashamed to fish, a #10 bugger. I kid you not when I say this was my second cast, a new pb for me, at least 15" probably 16".

 

I ended the day on that high note and wrapped it up. Oh, and here are a few pics from the day before.

 

 

tight lines,

Chris

 

 

Edited May 20, 2014 by Christopher k

[Christopheraaron]

Hit enter by accident, please disregard the post until I've edited.

[BillM]

Clean out your inbox young man

[Rod Caster]

You're already a better and more versatile fisheman than most people on this site, including myself haha.

 

Great report... I need to get down to my river soon for some speckies.

[Ralph Field]

Great looking fish and a nice report.

Edited May 20, 2014 by staffman

[tbaltovski]

Good report and amazing pictures of those specks

[moxie]

Well done Christopher. Thanks for sharing.

[davey buoy]

Nice job Christopher!!!!!!

[BillM]

Does it get any better then residents on dries? Great job Chris.

[pairofgreenhorns]

Great report. Thanks for sharing Christopher!

[Joey]

Sweet looking fish Chris. Well done!

[Broker]

Nice fish and good read, thanks Chris!