The day after the crushing loss at STSNBN I had to head back to town for an evening commitment, but I checked in at our home water on the way. It had been stocked for the first time this year since we were last there, so I was hoping for some easy stocker rainbows to salve the wound. I sort of got it. The water level was really low and the banks were trampled. The main stocking pools were as low as I’d ever seen them. Still, the first downstream pool yielded five rainbow, the most ever, and I thought maybe it was going to be a pretty good half a day.
I used a tandem Frenchie and Hare and Copper, and also a sparkle bugger. Three came on the nymphs and two on the bugger.
I moved downstream, but the little cliff pool and the pool where James caught his first trout were low and trampled and bleak looking. I caught a brookie from the latter.
Then I reached a deep pool just beneath that, behind a large rock. I messed around with several rainbows at depth, hooked one and lost it at the net, then caught a final fish on the nymph rig.
And that was that. It started out well, but all of the other pools were low and empty. I covered most of the regular stocking water but didn’t see another trout.