Mickey's Corner & the pesty pelicans

I was looking forward to Sunday, before it ever got light outside. I had new stuff to try! I was looking forward to fishing since we'd had thunderstorms with wind and rain for the past couple days and Sunday was supposed to be clear.

After getting our usual 8 hours of sleep, we had our coffee and a good breakfast of Mic's huevos rancheros. My version is a crispy tortilla (like a tostada shell), shredded cheese, salsa verde, fresh roasted pasilla chiles (by Rick), and a fried egg. Yum yum, one of our favorites. Rick was up before me, and as usual, had tied up a few flies. Like soup de jour, Rick ties flies de jour or flies of the day. After catching up on the Olympics and email, we trek down to the river.

Saturday we'd gone into town with the main purpose of getting a new fly line for my fly rod, a 2 piece 9' Steffen Brothers, 5-6 weight graphite. Rick had recently put on a new line that we had, but it just didn't seem to cast right with that new line. Casting was taking a lot of effort on my part and the end result was not a gently presented, nicely laid down fly, but rather a pile of line on the water (if you could pile anything on water). So we went into Tim Tollett's Frontier Anglers and purchased a Scientific Angler GPX 6 weight, weight forward line. When we walked into the fly shop Tim greeted us by name and said he missed us on the river one day last week. He said as they drifted past that section of the river, what he called "Mickey's Corner", he wondered where we were. He said he was going to call that stretch "Mickey's Corner" because we're always there. It was nice to chat with Tim for a few minutes.

We'd already been to The Bookstore in Dillon to trade for some more books and we made a stop at the grocery store to fill up our frig, freezer, and pantry. It'd been raining most of the morning and continued for the rest of the afternoon. We made a delicious pork roast in the slow cooker and had a great dinner. We were sure to have better weather on Sunday. After all I had new fly line to try out.

When we arrived at the river Sunday morning, at "Mickey's Corner", there were 2 fishermen leaving. They hadn't had any luck. We were going to have the river to ourselves. The wind was calm, but as I walked along the bank I did not see any fish rising. Not a good thing I told myself, but I knew that could change in an instant. The guys leaving pointed out a couple of giant white pelicans that had been cruising the far bank and eating fish! Our fish! The pelicans were not afraid of us and were real pesty. They're common on the lake, but we hadn't seen them on the river before. We tried to chase the pelicans away, but it was only temporary. They were soon back, stopping their paddling when they spotted a fish, going underwater to try to grab our fish! We kept trying to scare them, but they ignored us. They'd fly upstream and then float back downstream over and over again.

With only Clover the Wonder Dog as company, Rick and I spread out and I tried my new fly line. It was 100% different, better, and it was so nice. It had a pronounced "weight forward" feel, sort of shot right out, and the line loaded very easily. I was able to put the fly where I wanted and the end of the line turned over as it should, gently placing the fly ahead of the line. It's a nice line! But now, where are the fish?? I'm ready!

Although I saw a few fish come out of the water, they did not want any fly I threw. One consistently rising fish did try to take it once, but I tried to set the hook too quickly. Rick also was having the same luck (none) and went to the fly shop to borrow their seive, some screen cloth stretched across 2 dowels. You place it in the water and the bugs and stuff floating down the river get stuck on the netting. It was amazing what we discovered! No nymphs! No bugs! But time and time we did get a screen full of daphnia! You know, daphnia! (Don't feel bad, I didn't either.) Rick says he used to raise daphnia to feed to his tropical fish. It looked like a bunch of snot to me, tiny, slimy beads of snot. They're about the size of the head of a pin, tiny. I thought they looked like snail eggs. But they're actually small planktonic freshwater crustaceans, also known as water fleas because of the way they move, not because they bite. We could see the trout underwater, moving to eat something. And it was obviously daphnia or what I call trout krill.

While Rick tried my rod and the new line, I marched, literally, across the river and back trying to get rid of the pelicans. I had to laugh to myself as I thought about an email Steve sent me. In his email he said, "it does not appear to me that you are challenged in any particular way when you wade this mighty river." You would have laughed if you had seen me. In the past, in higher water, I've been so cautious, but now I was only thinking of getting rid of those pelicans.

It was a beautiful day on the river, hardly any wind, no one but us and the pesty pelicans, and not a fish willing to try our flies. We're looking forward to tomorrow. The fishing has got to be better than it was today.