Jan. 2, and 60.7 degrees

Met Uncle Wally at the top of the road leading down to Upper Creek?

We agreed to go over to Steels Creek instead. We decided to fish a section of Steels
that neither of us had fished before. This is a section low down in the campin'
areas. Thankfully, even with the temp. in the 60 degree range, there were no campers
to be seen. I tied on one of my recently tied #16 parachute Adams, and Walt tied on a
Madame X with dropper.

Walt took the lead and fished the first pool which is actually several pools in a
bedrock granite formation. Like Upper Creek, Steels Creek flows through a gorge, so
there are more bedrock plunge pools than mice in my house--at least I hope so, anyway.
Things started out slow and remained that way for me, throughout the day. Walt the
magnificent, however, had obviously sacrificed to the appropriate fish gods. While I
was fishin' drys exclusively, Walt was catchin' fish left and right on the dry he used
as an indicator? I couldn't charm a trout with anything I tied on, and I tied on and
on and on...

I, finally, resorted to a prince nymph dropper, and caught a brown in the 8 inch
range. That was it for me. Walt however, removed his dropper and continued to catch
trout on his #10 Madame X. I became distraught and just sat and cried very loudly.
Walt remained unaffected, continuing to catch trout? Where we expected to find trout,
they were absent and where we least expected to find them, they struck Walt's fly. We
didn't get any strikes in the deep pools, but our droppers were probably not set deep
enough. Mostly, trout were in the riffles and tight against rock formations--those
that Walt caught anyway, as I only caught one fish :~^(

We come up on Walt's Jeep and he was ready to head on out, as he had worn himself out
castin' and catchin'. I wasn't humiliated enough just yet and decided to go over to
Upper Creek.

Upper Creek skunked me! I still had a dropper rig tie on and attempted to coax trout
out of bedrock troughs, but they'd have none of that. I switched over to a green
Stimulator. Nada. I fished for about two hours and finally called it quits.

I gotta mouse pattern I'm gonna try next weekend, if he/she has dehydrated enough to
cast by then.

Mark