Nick Kaufman, Jim Murray and I hit the river today to do a little recon for upcoming guide trips. I'm not a huge fan of the Dam but Jim wanted to check it out. It's his first real trip so he wanted to make sure he could get 'em when the pressure's on. With the wind gusting at times into the 30's, we nymph fished the entire day from the Dam to Craig. We did pretty well and would have definitely caught more had we treated it like a guide day.
Like I said, I don't love fishing the Dam and nymphing all day can be a bit monotonous but when you're doing recon, knowing your main focus is to figure out how to get sports into fish, it's worth spending the day chasing bobbers. You learn a lot and the objective isn't to rail on a bunch of fish but to find where they are and what they're eating and then move on and find other runs you can count on where you know you can make the day. It's homework and it's not always the most fun but it's necessary if you want to be successful as a guide. If you spend enough time figuring these spots out, you can get people into fish quicker and more often and your days become much easier and maybe more importantly, you give yourself options for when things get tough or when someone throws you a curve.
The difference between what we do as recon and how we fish while guiding is pretty significant. I think all of us who have been guiding for a while have caught enough fish for ourselves to not have to put 40 fish in the boat to call it a good day. That's why when we find things that work, we move on to try different things that might work even better or move down to fish other runs instead of spending more time than we need in one spot or with a specific presentation. Today we saw a few BWO's so we threw BWO nymphs just to see if they would eat them and although it wasn't on fire, we did get a few. When we're guiding, we don't change flies that are working and if we're getting fish in a run, we'd rather row back up and fish it again because you don't leave fish to find fish when someone is paying 5 bills to wreck 'em.
Not everyone is the same however and for some, spending the day chucking the big stuff for the two-footers or learning new techniques might be more appealing, which might mean not bringing the numbers to the net but is still rewarding and fun. In my opinion, fly fishing should be about exploration and pushing yourself to learn new things or accomplish new goals and sometimes that means leaving the familiar to build your repertoire.
Keep 'em where they live...
P.S. Another tip is to not leave your SD card for your camera at home...more pics coming soon.
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