Recent weather has blown out about 99.9% of the area trout streams but lucked out at a small tailwater flow. No sooner than I arrived rain started falling briskly. Thankfully I was dressed warm enough to endure the cold temps being soaked. I only fish this stretch in flood situations due to the lack of access and remote nature. There was about 25 cfs of discharge but noticed a significant spike in volume as a made my way downstream nearly doubling after just a 2 mile slog down the channel. I had hoped to effectively fish some wading downstream but there were no takers. The rain made sight fishing challenging and due to the stable tailwater flows, a fine layer of red sediment seemed to be everywhere so everywhere I went the red cloud advanced before me.
After about 2 hours of wading/hiking downstream, I turned around and started back upstream. Action was still nonexistent and started becoming frustrated. Took off the streamer and attached an pheasantail nymph with an egg pattern dropper. I thought about using an indicator but these gaudy devices do not appeal to me and have no feelings but contempt for them. The yarn egg acted as my drift indicator which was very necessary being that this was my very first attempt at nymphing. Unfortunately the streambed consisted of ragged rubble and cobble. I rig kept on getting hung up. I really wanted to float a dry with a dropper but did not have any 6x tippet and 4x is much too stiff. This situation kinda irritated me being it was in perfect dry/dropper drift water.
After some time I switched back to a streamer and the sun started peeping a bit. This sunlight seemed to stir the fish and finally caught a couple cookie cutter browns and then two very colorful Rainbows sporting their mating colors all of which were running about 10" in length. I then encountered some promising submerged rock formations under some tree limbs. After making a couple casting attempts, I landed my streamer right where I wanted it and fish on! It was a nice one. I did manage to catch one more brown so I ended with only five but at least I found a place to go and land one pretty Brown.
After about 2 hours of wading/hiking downstream, I turned around and started back upstream. Action was still nonexistent and started becoming frustrated. Took off the streamer and attached an pheasantail nymph with an egg pattern dropper. I thought about using an indicator but these gaudy devices do not appeal to me and have no feelings but contempt for them. The yarn egg acted as my drift indicator which was very necessary being that this was my very first attempt at nymphing. Unfortunately the streambed consisted of ragged rubble and cobble. I rig kept on getting hung up. I really wanted to float a dry with a dropper but did not have any 6x tippet and 4x is much too stiff. This situation kinda irritated me being it was in perfect dry/dropper drift water.
After some time I switched back to a streamer and the sun started peeping a bit. This sunlight seemed to stir the fish and finally caught a couple cookie cutter browns and then two very colorful Rainbows sporting their mating colors all of which were running about 10" in length. I then encountered some promising submerged rock formations under some tree limbs. After making a couple casting attempts, I landed my streamer right where I wanted it and fish on! It was a nice one. I did manage to catch one more brown so I ended with only five but at least I found a place to go and land one pretty Brown.