An Excellent Day on Two Small Streams

This morning I rose early. It was time to get out for some election day wild trout. The conditions were perfect. It was a stunningly beautiful mid fall morning. Perfect. I decided to first seek out some larger native Brookies I found a week ago before fishing for wild Browns the rest of the day.

To my surprise the brookies were still just chasing each other around. I only saw on pair on a redd (I of course let them be). I tied on a hair's ear soft hackle and went to work. I landed one smaller male, then the big boy I was looking for. He proceeded to make a mess on me nice just cleaned coat. Ah, well, what can you expect when you fish during the spawn.

A bit downstream I took one more pretty little thing, then made the move to the Brown Trout water.

The same nymph techniques were in order on the bigger stream that I consider to be my home water. It was not long before a Mayfly Grande nymph was nailed by two successive jumping wilds, and then a holdover that acted like it was wild. I've caught him before, actually. 

I have no idea why the hook in the head thing happens so often. Maybe a missed strike?

The next thing to take the fly was a tree, so I changed to a mono nymph. It took one smaller fish but was just not getting down well enough, so I swapped it out for an Iso nymph. That one did the trick. In a pool just above a fallen tree, there was a strong take. I set the hook and the fight was on. This was a much better fish, in fact the best out of this stream this year. Bulked up and colorful, the perfect specimen. Of course there were plenty more to come.

I caught two more on the nymph before finding a long glide with some risers at the top. I put on a different spool with line more suitable for size 20 dries and proceeded to catch three of the four risers on an olive. The were quite nice browns, the last of the day.

I'm going to fit a new handle soon, this ones older then me and a pain to fish with.