Warm? Trout Didn't Care

On Thursday we got rain. FINALLY. And lots of it. The next morning I awoke early and geared up for some small stream action. When I got to the river it looked exactly as I had hoped. It was flowing in normal spring fashion with a little extra dirt. Perfect conditions. Except when I felt the water temperature. I had neglected to think of how the rain water temperature would effect this normally chilly spring fed freestone. Of course this must happen often enough, and wild trout are amazingly good at surviving extreme conditions. I started working with nymphs. It wasn't long at all before I had landed one little wild and hooked and lost another big one. Judging the size of fish without getting them out of the water is hard but he appeared to be 18 inches long. He won fair and square, and happily left my leader and flies intact. These went on to catch me some other smaller Brown and one very nice one. They fought very well and had mouths full of all sorts of larvae and nymphs. One practically jumped into my pocket.

It was nice to be on the water before the sun.

A very pretty native, a less common catch for this Brown dominated stream

What a fantastically beautiful fish!

I switched the rig to include a Black Leach and that fly got me another nice wild brown. the two bigger ones from the excursion (in the 10-14 inch range) are less common in this stream, although there are some true beasts around the 20 inch range. After that very colorful leach eater I tied on a beet for some dry fly action and was rewarded with some more pretty fish. 

Back downstream I returned to the nymphs, and very quickly doubled up with two large stocked brookies. That is a situation I have never experienced, and the bottom fish didn't take long to pluck off it's fly. I did land the top fish, but was disappointing not to have gotten the chance to photograph such a lucky event.