Weather – Sunny, 78
James and I headed out for another full day on STSNBN. It’s a comfortable length for a full day’s fishing, a bit over a mile downstream from the start. We end up in the trouty lower portion when the browns are feeding in early evening.
The water was in decent shape, but for whatever reason it was a more subdued day than some. We tried to emphasize keeping moving so that we had more time in the lower stretches later in the day. That might have depressed the catch count a bit.
I also had a bad case of fly-hopping, switching too often between a killer bug, Utah killer bug, black woolly bugger, amano kebari, a squirmy wormy (experiment left over from the preceding Wednesday when the waters were turbid), and a pathetic, scrawny self-tied first attempt at a gold ribbed hare’s ear.
For most of the day, the highlights were larger sized chub. I ended up with 52 creek chub, 31 common shiner, and another presumptive bluegill, only the third I’ve ever caught from the stream. I got the closest thing to an in-focus photograph of it this time. I have no idea why there’s some peculiar curse with photographing them.
We got down to the bottom without so much as a whiff of a trout, and the bottom bend pool didn’t yield as usual. James packed it in. I put on a black woolly bugger for the way back. There was more water in the creek than usual and the bottom pool had a deeper, more extended riffle at its head. Normally the back part is too shallow to bother much with, but it had decent water in it today. I tossed the woolly bugger in and was shocked when a decent sized brown struck at it. He took it on the third attempt. I played him for a while, had him to the edge of the net and the hook came out. Another replay of the two lost in similar fashion on the previous day-long trip. We stopped at “trout pool,” which had changed in the thunderstorm flood with a downed tree blocking the nice riffle at the head. I tossed the bugger into the productive run alongside the rock. Large brown immediately hit it. Another replay. Longish fight, I was handlining him to the net, gripped the line too tight and he gave a huge thrust and snapped the tippet. I think there were knots in the tippet which weakened it. I hate to leave a hook in a fish, but oh well. It was probably the largest brown I’ve had on the line, not that I’ve had many browns on the line. Finally, at “deep pool” I waded into position to cast toward the really deep portion along the far rock bank. Nothing much was happening and on one retrieve I turned to speak with James. From the corner of my eye I saw a trout emerge. He wasn’t following the retrieve, but came straight up from the depths laterally. I was stunned by its size. It had to be at least 20 inches. It took the one look, didn’t manage to grab the woolly bugger (or didn’t try, it happened so fast I’m not sure), and we didn’t see it again. It’s probably for the best. It would have been all but impossible to deal with on the Rhodo. With my skillset, anyway.
So, a second basically frustrating day with two trout lost at the edge of the net, and zero trout landed. But no day fishing with James is a bad day (no day fishing is a bad day, period), and we caught plenty of fish. James set a new personal record with 23, 10 chub and 13 common shiner.
