On the third day I visited a favourite special regulation catch and release only stream with wild brown trout. Given that Bear Creek had cleared quite a lot while I fished it through the previous day, I was hopeful I’d get back to clear water. Well, no. It was very high and murky. As the black slump buster had worked under similar conditions early on the preceding day, I decided to put some effort into in and see what I could make of it. I ended up fishing the length of the accessible stream upstream from the parking lot. It wasn’t a banner day, but it was a pretty good day. Taken together, these results give me a lot more confidence in what I can accomplish when the streams are off colour.
The action wasn’t constant, but I engaged with trout pretty steadily in the swollen water. A combination of an overcast day and murky water at least reduced the amount of obvious spooking, which is usually an issue here.
I still had the entire lower section to fish but by the time I’d worked back down to the parking lot I was getting kind of tired and cranky. Sad to say, but three days of pushing hard along trout streams were making themselves felt. Age. It’ll kill ya. I lost two slump busters in quick succession in the pools near the parking lot and gave up. Putting my feet up and reading a book back in the cabin sounded good. I can’t find a record of the final totals, but my photographs from the day include eleven distinct browns, so that’s probably it.
