Conan the Librarian
February 19th, 2004, 03:10 PM
ROFFians,
Since many of you are locked up in your cabins waiting out the
winter, I figured I'd taunt you with a little excursion I went on.
Yesterday's temp was in the 70's, with a clear-blue sky and mild south
breeze. So I made arrangements to get the afternoon off and headed
out to the local tailwater fishery where they stock factory trouts.
This was my first time to this particular area, and when I arrived
it looked like almost perfect habitat. It starts off as a long placid
pool that narrows, first deeply undercutting the close bank and then
turning into a fast, shallow, boulder-strewn run. It then plunges
over a little fall (~7' high) into a deep pool with a huge boulder
breaking up the current into two fast lanes right at its head.
This whole fishery is primarily a lead and lob, dodge and dredge,
chuck and duck fishery, as the popular "flies" seem to be SJ worms,
glo-bugs, and disco midges, with a rare fish taken on a dry. But, I
still like to prospect with a dry at first, as it limbers up my
casting and it's just more fun than slinging shot.
I tied on a #16 Sierra bright dot (the flourescent body makes it a
decent attractor fly for these fish) and started working my way
upstream from below the bottom pool. The water was tough wading, not
because of the speed of the flow (river flow was about 270 cfs
yesterday), but because there are lots of sudden dropoffs and the
bottom gets a bit mucky in some spots, and you can easily wind up
sinking in quite a bit more than you anticipated.
After one pass through all the likely spots of this ~1/4 mile of
stream, without so much as the sign of a fish, I decided to tie on an
indicator and a dropper. It just so happens that my favorite
indicator is a #10 Stimulator. :-) I tied a #14 partridge and olive
soft hackle to the bend of the hook and fished that for a while.
Still no luck.
Next I switched to a #20 disco midge dropper and finally to a SJ
worm ("flesh" color seems to be the rage). I suprised myself by not
getting either rig hopelessly tangled, but still didn't have any luck.
I was fishing my new TFO 9' 5-wt. for the first extended time, and
I must say that it's a joy to cast. Coupled with a Redington CT-5/6,
it felt extremely light yet I could really feel the thing load,
something I'm not really accustomed to with my *rv*s Clearwater or old
Fenwick HMG rods.
The area I was fishing has quite a bit of tree cover along the
banks, and since I couldn't wade far enough to get away from it all, I
was having to improvise a bit (which is usually dangerous given my
skill level). But the rod responded to sidearm casts, backhand
("wrong shoulder") casts, roll casted very nicely, etc. My first
impression is that it is going to be one helluva rod for the money.
I finished up the afternoon by tossing a few recent ties of mine,
including a "clusterf*ck midge", an extended body (deer) brown drake,
and several others. I still didn't catch anything (they were
*supposed* to have stocked this area twice already this year), but I
had a great time getting back in the swing of things, and it was fun
to see that my tying skills are coming along well enough that not only
do my flies look better in the vise, but they perform well on the
water.
Now if I could just catch some fish with them.
Chuck Vance (50+ lines just to say I got skunked)
Since many of you are locked up in your cabins waiting out the
winter, I figured I'd taunt you with a little excursion I went on.
Yesterday's temp was in the 70's, with a clear-blue sky and mild south
breeze. So I made arrangements to get the afternoon off and headed
out to the local tailwater fishery where they stock factory trouts.
This was my first time to this particular area, and when I arrived
it looked like almost perfect habitat. It starts off as a long placid
pool that narrows, first deeply undercutting the close bank and then
turning into a fast, shallow, boulder-strewn run. It then plunges
over a little fall (~7' high) into a deep pool with a huge boulder
breaking up the current into two fast lanes right at its head.
This whole fishery is primarily a lead and lob, dodge and dredge,
chuck and duck fishery, as the popular "flies" seem to be SJ worms,
glo-bugs, and disco midges, with a rare fish taken on a dry. But, I
still like to prospect with a dry at first, as it limbers up my
casting and it's just more fun than slinging shot.
I tied on a #16 Sierra bright dot (the flourescent body makes it a
decent attractor fly for these fish) and started working my way
upstream from below the bottom pool. The water was tough wading, not
because of the speed of the flow (river flow was about 270 cfs
yesterday), but because there are lots of sudden dropoffs and the
bottom gets a bit mucky in some spots, and you can easily wind up
sinking in quite a bit more than you anticipated.
After one pass through all the likely spots of this ~1/4 mile of
stream, without so much as the sign of a fish, I decided to tie on an
indicator and a dropper. It just so happens that my favorite
indicator is a #10 Stimulator. :-) I tied a #14 partridge and olive
soft hackle to the bend of the hook and fished that for a while.
Still no luck.
Next I switched to a #20 disco midge dropper and finally to a SJ
worm ("flesh" color seems to be the rage). I suprised myself by not
getting either rig hopelessly tangled, but still didn't have any luck.
I was fishing my new TFO 9' 5-wt. for the first extended time, and
I must say that it's a joy to cast. Coupled with a Redington CT-5/6,
it felt extremely light yet I could really feel the thing load,
something I'm not really accustomed to with my *rv*s Clearwater or old
Fenwick HMG rods.
The area I was fishing has quite a bit of tree cover along the
banks, and since I couldn't wade far enough to get away from it all, I
was having to improvise a bit (which is usually dangerous given my
skill level). But the rod responded to sidearm casts, backhand
("wrong shoulder") casts, roll casted very nicely, etc. My first
impression is that it is going to be one helluva rod for the money.
I finished up the afternoon by tossing a few recent ties of mine,
including a "clusterf*ck midge", an extended body (deer) brown drake,
and several others. I still didn't catch anything (they were
*supposed* to have stocked this area twice already this year), but I
had a great time getting back in the swing of things, and it was fun
to see that my tying skills are coming along well enough that not only
do my flies look better in the vise, but they perform well on the
water.
Now if I could just catch some fish with them.
Chuck Vance (50+ lines just to say I got skunked)