Firsts

After making sure that the Wife and kids didn't want to go, I invited a friend of mine to head out on Memorial Day to do some fishing. When Ross said he couldn't, I asked if his little brother Luc would be interested. Luc hasn't done much fly fishing so he was pretty excited to get out for a full day on the water. 

We found the parking area unusually busy, but not crowded by any stretch so we put on our waders, grabbed our stuff, and put some distance between us and everyone else. While making our way downstream I even managed to not stop where I usually get distracted, but this was the first trip to this stream for the year and I was excited to get fishing. 

Sorry for the grainy pic, but I've never seen a crane up a tree before

Started fishing at the same place as I did years ago when I first made the hike down and we found some willing fish right off the bat, even if the first few were long-line released. Luc then made the first catch of the day and informed me that this was his first fish on a fly rod, and his first brown trout. I was pretty excited for him, and glad that he quickly added other brownies to his resumé.

Glad to be a part of this first!

Luc was using a Chubby Chernobyl with a Prince Nymph dropper and while the fish didn't seem too interested in the dry, I still had hope. I managed to catch a couple on my dropper, a Mod. Hare's Ear that I fished behind an Indicator Chernobyl. The second hole even let me show Luc what a tiger trout looks like.

Cute lil guy

The fishing seemed to get quite a bit slower when the sun came out. Although the pair of pelicans that insisted on staying just ahead of us probably didn't help much.

They know where the fish are

With the slow down in the fishing action, we started looking for answers by way of fly changes and while I tried a Slumpbuster, Luc decided to put on a Zebra Midge that he bought at Walmart as a second dropper. It was money well spent as he soon hooked the biggest fish he's ever caught.

A beauty

Other than Luc's big fish we didn't find much more success for a while so we stopped for lunch and enjoyed the sunshine. After that we decided to skip ahead to a good hole that's been productive for me in the past. Too bad the fish didn't hear about that as we continued to struggle finding any willing fish. That is until I reached the very top of the hole and put on my Simple Sow Bug (I'll tie some of these up soon so you can see 'em) as a second dropper and found a few willing fish, including a couple of small rainbows and a cutthroat. That rounded out all the trout species that live in this stream! Moving up stream the fishing was still spotty, but we found a few more willing fish as long as our nymphs were fished deep enough. 

Some great fish were caught today

At the final spot before making the hike back to the truck both Luc and I hooked into a nice fish...briefly. Even though it was tempting to continue fishing, it seemed like a good finish to a great day. The hike out always seems at least twice as long as the hike in, but we made it in good time. It only gets better from here on out! Hope you can get out, be safe, and enjoy nature.

- Kidder

Can't wait to get back there