They haven't turned the water flow up yet. Had to try it while its still low. Rumor has it, there's still some big bugs? Not really. The water did have some big PMD spinners, and the occasional Flav spinner on it this morning when I started around 8:15. Hatch never materialized on the upper ranch. Just a riser here and there. And this one particular fish . . .
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| Low Water |
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| Snow is Gone |
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Just below that triangle rock, in a near-impossible drift lane, a large fish moved left, right, up, and down several feet eating something. Several times a minute. There's a ton of different current speeds between me and the fish. Not to mention dead water and back eddies. Go to the beetle, pile up the leader in as big of mess as possible, and hope. First cast, he eats it! Big time. Zing goes the drag, for about 6 feet. Then he's out of the water, and gone in an instant. Some dumb-ass had his fly line wrapped around the butt of the rod coming off the reel. Drag stops, leader snaps. Now I don't get too upset about losing a fish very often, but If I were writing this right after it happened, there would be a lot of profanity. There was a lot said since nobody was around to offend, or embarrass myself throwing a tantrum like a little boy who lost his ice cream off the cone. A lot of cussing. I blew the damn fish of the day, after spending a couple hours looking for it, and lost a $3.95 Harrop Beetle.
So I went back up river, hooked and lost a couple more fish in the next hour, and ended up back at the triangle. And low and behold, there's a large fish feeding in the same manner, this time about 20 feet behind the same rock. About where it came off an hour ago. (It IS the same fish, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.) So it already ate a beetle, now it needs something different. Harrop Cripple to the rescue. It took three casts this time, despite the drift lane being much more forgiving 20 feet below the rock. Eat, zing, and into backing in under 10 seconds. I chased the fucker this time, and got to net it 150 feet downstream. I wanted to get my beetle back! Well, that would have made a nice story, but I didn't see no beetle in its mouth anyway. It was definitely the same fish though. Redemption. A very good day.
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| All fat 21 inches of it, tail included. |
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| Fly of the Day |
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| Something needs to be done about this. No vacancy. |
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