I dashed back out to the same stocker stream as last week. This time, I hit it the day after the first stocking of the season. It was a mixed weather day, mostly windy and cold, but with occasional brief periods of sunshine. As I predicted last week, it had a lot of water in it, then. A more realistic view emerged this time, but there are still a series of lovely upstream pools. I checked out the small stocked tributary in some detail. It’s very bushy and overhanging. There were quite a few fish holding in the little pools, but they were extremely spooky. More trouble than I felt like facing on this day. I fished almost exactly the same water as last week on the main stream, except I went upstream further. The stream rapidly got tiny, but there were little bathtub sized pools full of browns as far as I went.
I fished the GM 39 to begin with, using a two nymph rig. I caught a couple on this, one on an egg pattern and one on a hare and copper. I tried the Rhodo rigged with a black woolly bugger and then an olive plus size killer bugger. Didn’t get a single follow with them. Eventually I gave into temptation and went back to the Kurenai. I settled on a rig of a hare and copper, then a commercial bead head pheasant tail off the bend. I had three left from last year, and lost two. I’m maybe not being sensible using the Kurenai with fresh stockers in abundance, but I just can’t put the thing down. I didn’t have any trouble with the fish I caught (biggest were in the 11-12″ range). The real downside is that if I hook into anything genuinely large, there won’t be very much I’ll be able to do. But it’s such a joy of a little rod to handle and cast. I had James’s Fine Mode Kosansui along as well and had a mind to rig it with dries. There was a bit of pretty steady rising in a couple of the pools so I would likely have had a good chance to grab a couple more on dries. But I couldn’t muster the energy. I cast the nymphs over and caught a couple of the risers on those.
When I got upstream and settled in with the Kurenai, the rainbows all hit the pheasant tail nymph. I couldn’t see what all of the browns took (the hook came out after netting one of them), but the ones I could see took the hare and copper.
It was a pretty decent day. I saw some people downstream, several cars parked, but there was noone else on the stretch I fished. Two friendly spin fishermen arrived as I was finishing up and about to depart. Probably the only new piece of information was the efficacy of the pheasant tail nymphs. I guess I’m now pretty much a convert to the “New Zealand” tandem nymph style. Rigged with a hare and copper and a Frenchie (when I get around to tying a bunch), it should be a pretty effective one-two punch. I didn’t get a full day in, maybe six hours of fishing total, due to the weather and the length of the drive. The final numbers were 11 rainbows, 3 browns, and 1 brookie (I think only the second time I’ve caught all three species on the same day in the same stream), along with 3 creek chub.