Wonderful Wednesday

The river's flow has been dropped to about 200 cfs which makes it oh-so easy for me to wade. I can go anywhere I want without being washed away. The water has continuously dropped for the past few days, from 600 cfs to 200 cfs, making each day a different experience for us AND the fish. The trout are finding new places to hang out and we're searching for them. The water is rather skinny in places and the fish are finding the deeper runs to hide from the anglers.

Today we walked to the river around 10 AM and there was no one there but us, the osprey and the fish. And Clover the Wonder Dog. It was so peaceful.

Soon after we were joined by a few other fisherpeople, but it was not crowded. Yesterday had been a great day of "catching" for me and I have to thank Rick for his ability to create very successful flies. Today was also good. We both caught some large, healthy trout. They're not skinny; they are fat, tall, broad shouldered. The fish are about 20 and the flies are about 20. We used a variety of nymphs yesterday and today, with success on the 20 PT (with and without flash), 20 black, 20 "thread" nymph in red, black or green, 20 lightening bug, 20 hare's ear, 20 Ray Charles, and more size 20's. In case you're not familar with size 20 flies, they're about the size of a grain of rice, maybe smaller. The fish are about 20", some 18", some 20+. Perhaps because it's still the beginning of the season and they haven't been caught before, but they sure do run and jump and splash and wiggle and go in circles, mad at being fooled by a fake fly on a hook. They rip up, down and literally in circles. We've both had a few fish break-off from our 5X tippit and we've cleaned up a few fish that were trailing someone else's broken tippit with fly still attached.