Amazing how quickly trout remember to look carefully before they eat.

 

With a float of the WB on tap for tomorrow, I spent the better part of the today driving around looking at water where it was about to happen or where it had already happened.

 The wind, as usual, saved its best efforts for the peak of the Hendrickson hatch, delighting guides with surly clients, and frustrating everyone trying to make a presentable cast to a rising fish. Tried a pool well above "where it's happening" and basically found out why I had so much space to myself. There were a few caddis and even fewer Hendricksons and a couple of fish willing to eat everything that floated by.

Saving myself for the spinner fall, I drove over to the BE and walked up the bank along one of the most  beautiful (and difficult to wade) pieces of water in the entire system. Saw a few caddis on the water and not a single may fly of any kind. Sat on a log that a beaver had skinned the bark off and watched two trout rise several times each. Two weeks ago, I'd have been wading towards them after the first rise. Today the first step off the bank would have put me in over my waders.

Sat at another spot, this time on the WB, to see if it had possibilities for the spinner fall. Felt there was just too much water for comfortable wading and at a little after 7:00 I returned to where I fished the spinners last night. There was less rain, more wind, more bugs, and smarter fish. Got refused several times. The fish continued to eat but just never seemed to be in the right place when my fly went by, (funny how that happens more and more as the season goes on). Hooked five fish, landed four but had a bunch of surface glupers let me know I've got to up my game if I want to catch them.     

  

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