Rough

Wind, sun, and a bunch of little fish. Yep, I went down through the canyon yesterday because I thought regardless of what happened the last time, there has to be some big fish looking up. We had three days of warm weather and wind and a ton of hoppers getting dumped into the river. I could see them kicking around on the surface for days now, along with a few October caddis and figured at least some big rainbows would have to be eating them even if the browns have somehow done the greatest disappearing act in fly fishing history. Nope.

We started out nymphing a run we did real well on the day before and we caught a few little fish, had a couple decent ones but it was really kind of a bust. The wind was blowing straight down stream and getting a drift with the wind and the weeds was particularly tough for my guys. What they could do was throw line however, so we tied on some big stuff and let 'em chuck hoppers and October's. (I streamer fished with a couple good sticks the day before and caught a few rainbows and that was it. With the high sun, I didn't feel it was an option.) We did get some big eats but it's difficult to be on your game when those eats come once every 15 minutes. You kind of get lulled to sleep and when it happens, it takes you totally off guard and before you know it, your hopper has disappeared and then pops back up on the surface and the guide, (me,) is yelling, "get 'em, get 'em, get 'em!"

The problem is, you know there are good fish there. You know there are big bugs on the water. (There's also a ton of little bugs they seem to like more however.) You want it to happen so badly because fishing with 30 other boats at the dam sucks. But it's just not so move over boys, I'm going to be joining the boat show for at least a couple more weeks.

Keep 'em where they live...