It's not always bad to be in the right place for the wrong reason.

With sunshine and an air temp in the 70's there would be no pseudos on the freestones this afternoon (if they didn't hatch with cloudy skies and 57 degree water yesterday, they certainly wouldn't hatch in 60 degree water today). Headed for the UEB, which with 700 cfs of 44 degree water being released from Pepacton has the only temps suitable for pseudo hatching in the system. 

Arrived at 2:00 to find both pseudos' and rising fish in an "A" pool with no fishermen in sight. Geared up and waded in and for the next three hours had good bugs and rising fish. The fish were fussy and were eating both just under the surface and on top. Surprisingly 2/3s of the fish I landed were rainbows. The two biggest fish were 19 inch holdover hatchery browns. One gave a good account of himself while the other came in like that wool hunting sock full of water I've talked about before. At 5:15 there were still bugs on the water but the fish just plain stopped eating.  Reeled it in and headed for the car to carry out the second half of my plan for today.

Five thirty found me driving east on Rte 17 towards Roscoe.  Thought maybe the bugs would hatch late on the freestones due to the summer like air and water temps. Alas, they didn't. Two anglers were leaving as I walked down to the river.  Stood on the bank and saw nary a rise.  It was too late to go anywhere else so I waded in. It was at least a half hour before I saw a quiet sip.  The fish came to my cast and said no. As fish rose I changed flies (smaller and smaller) until finally one impaled himself under the chin while refusing the fly. By the time I got the fish unhooked there were several fish rising. Saw a few (very few) spinners above the water and put on a trico spinner. It wasn't the right spinner but it was the smallest one I had. The fish ate it, willingly. There weren't a lot of spinners and apparently they were hungry. Ended up having enough fish eat the spinner in about half an hour to come within one fish of equaling my three hour afternoon total (all of the spinner eating fish were 12/14 inches long and hatchery born).

One note in passing - there were stenos (yes Cahill's) on the UEB and some of them were being eaten. Put one on several times when I had fish rising in front of me, had two takes (lost 'em both) and a refusal.  

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

All my life's a circle.

IT'S GOOD TO BE BACK HOME AGAIN!

A rational explanation escapes me.