Panic!

What the hell?  9 am, no midges, no midging fish.  OK.  No big deal.  10 am, not a PMD in sight. That's when they popped on Armstrong's the last two days.  Hmmm.  Do I need to go upstream?  11 am, STILL no pmd's in sight.  A stray rise here and there to something, a stray midge or PMD I can't see.  Pretty close to driving upstream, but I have Eva's all to myself.  Is this why?  11:30, what the fuck?  Are there no bugs down here?  I'm outta here.  Wait, there's a rise.  Might as well cast.  12:00 noon, FINALLY!  A small spattering of PMD's by god.  And now the fish are rising above and below me.  Panic over, but I was beginning to wonder.  No, I was gettin' pissed.

But when it started, many of the good fish weren't taking PMD's that I could tell.  Reminded me of yesterday.  So, I broke out the killer little midge from last fall, and a few went right for it.  They were eating something other than the PMD's and it got things rolling.  Occasionally a fish would take or go after a dun, but it was fish eating emergers that again got my attention.  The bigger fish, doing that zoom after the bug thing again.

I was getting duped by a couple reminiscent of the two fish yesterday.  Today, it was a rainbow and a cutt fighting for position, eating something unseen regularly, and really going after it.  After a few failures, I found the big emerger tied Klink style that I had tied over the winter just for this occasion, this specific run, and these two fish.   Last summer the same week I saw the same thing, and I was looking for a solution.  Two casts later, the rainbow turns a foot and a half to its left and engulfs the fly!  I mean, he had to have it.  Long story short, it was the fly of the afternoon until it got chewed up.  I tied only one, though I had one each of some others similar.  Quite a few fish ate it.

Despite the fairly sparse hatch and gusty winds, fish stayed up all afternoon.  I tied on a lot of flies with mixed results before and after the FOD.  And no love on the yellow hanger, though I didn't have it on during the peak hours of PMD's because that ostrich one was working so well, and it was new to me.  I'll add a few.  Oh, and I always get that Depuy's Slam thing here too, browncuttbow.

I think they were eating midges early in the hatch.  This got some good eats.

The adult climbing out of the nymph case, all on one hook.  FOD by far.  Not the same as just a trailing shuck, or is it?

Never tie just one!  Never!  But for some reason I did.  Just to see.  Know I know.  Here's proof.

This guy moved big time to get it.  Watched him for over an hour before I got the take.

Similar, and it got some eats after the peak.  Pheasant instead of ostrich.

Got a couple on this.  It wasn't it.

Now here's a whole other storyline . . . 

I knew that the photos I had been taking with the GoPro were not bright, shiny, and colorful like some I had taken in recent years.  Certainly not like I'm getting with my regular still camera, despite it being a point and shoot.  I couldn't figure out why, and was thinking it was the new globe I was using with the GoPro to get the in/out shots.  (Pretty cool so far!)  Then I accidentally hit the video button today.  I played it tonight, and holy shit, what a difference in color!  Then it hit me.  I think all the crisp colorful shots I took 2 or 3 years ago with the older GoPro were actually screen captures from video instead of time-lapse stills.  All I know is the color on the video put the color on the stills to shame.  I had forgotten.  Hadn't used the GoPro in a long time.  We'll see.  Only one day left in the clear water, with sunny skies, so I'll take all the "pictures" in video mode tomorrow with the GoPro and see what I get.  Or . . . maybe everything was just right in that short accidental video.