PTHW Ep. 8: Leapers

Conditions seemed right today and honestly I was expecting to get a big fish at some point. Spoiler alert, I didn't. But I did catch a healthy number of fish, three stocked brook trout, one stocked brown, and three wild browns. For the most part I was throwing streamers but the first two wild browns were on a nymph... but we're not quite there yet.

I started out with my favorite all around single hook streamer, an orange and olive cactus bugger. That fly took the first couple of stockers and was bumped a handful of times as well, all in a deep eddy. One of those bumps felt very large but you never can tell unless you see the fish.

Wanting to potentially avoid the stockers, which on previous outings hadn't liked bigger streamers, I changed to a four inch articulated fly that has done quite well here in the past. It didn't work, I the sewer trout kept grabbing. 

There was a long gap in there where I just didn't get any fish, despite a number of solid eats I decided to try a nymph just to see, even though they had been less effective than streamers here most days. First run I stuck a buttery brown trout that must have been a reincarnated salmon. It jumped ten times, no exaggerating. It just launched itself skyward time after time before I got it to hand. It was a stunner! 

If you look carefully you will notice the hook is in a different place in each photo I sincerely have no clue how that happened. I had the fish in the water between photos, the hook must have come loose and then re-hooked further back the top jaw. Sharp barbless hooks stick fish really well. The energy this one had in the fight was not lost in handling, she went home healthy!

I got a second wild brown on the same fly further downstream, a silvery little yearling with purple rather than red spots. After letting him go I changed to a Zoo Couger hoping to get some fish I had moved on the way up. I didn't. I got one I hadn't moved. This one jumped almost as much as the first.

I was going to fish for a while longer, and indeed in the 45 minutes after that last fish I moved quite a few more, all small, but a stupid mistake and a soaked arm cut my outing short. Fine by me, I didn't need much more than that.