Water: FT Creek
Location: Bridge crossing near town
Conditions: 50’s, sunny, calm. Water extremely low and relatively warm.
I had to get out and fish a while this afternoon and I’m glad I did. The fly fishing was a real stress reliever, as it tends to be. I’d been a little frustrated with lack of success on the river over the past few days, so I really wanted to get back into a rhythm of sorts. I walked downstream from the bridge to an area I hadn’t fished before, but didn’t go far. It was pretty obvious that with the angle of the sun and extreme low water, the fish were going to be too spooky to catch fishing downstream. Headed back up to the bridge and caught an 8 inch rainbow on an elk hair caddis in a fast pool.
Back above the bridge, I was in familiar territory and the fishing was great. That is, it was great when I practically crawled up to a pool or run and cast no shadow. Otherwise, all the fish busted out and it was on to the next pool. I fished the 14 elk hair caddis and a pheasant tail or copper john on a dropper. Most fish hit the nymph but had a few others on the dry. Aside from the one rainbow, I hooked about a dozen browns. Two were exceptional for this creek, between 13.5-14 inches, fat and super active. Both ate the fly viciously and gave me a heck of a fight. One finally got under a root in an undercut bank and broke me off. In doing so, though, he hooked the dropper up on the root with the dry still in his mouth. The brown was stuck there to the root with about a foot of line to move around with! Never done that before. I approached to turn him lose but he managed to get it done himself.
Had about a dozen or so vehicles driving by and some folks watching me from up on the hill during the couple of hours, which made the experience a bit less enjoyable, but overall it was good.
No camera today. Of course.
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