Lots of Wacky Stuff

That was how my day started yesterday. That guy was not alone, there were a whole bunch with him. I'm not sure why but the seemed completely unaware o my presence despite the act that I whistled at them. Either they didn't notice or they didn't care. It was early but it's still pretty unusual to see a pack of coyotes out in the daylight like that. Just the start to the day's weirdness. The original plan was to chase big browns with streamers. The stream and fish had other ideas.

I fished a solid mile of river with a variety of streamers and ha no more than a handful of fish lazily roll on the fly. The water was warm but not too warm, the fish would not be in any immediate danger, but it may have been warm enough to slow down their metabolic rate. In other words, the water was too warm for them to be in the mood to chase down big meals. I switched to nymphs and smaller streamers and proceeded to break off or loose every trout I hooked and catch literally every other type fish in the darn river.

In one particular stretch I caught a ridiculous number of bass. They were so aggressive and hungry they were doing things I'd never seen before, jumping for the fly as I pulled it out of the water. I had one fish jump and grab the fly swinging in the air in front of me. A handful of times multiple fish charged the fly at once. I waded right through a hole to grab a broken off fly and as soon as I got out I cast back into the area where I had literally just stood, and wham, fish on. It was absurd. But it wasn't what I came for.

Knowing full well it would make my day quite a bit longer I decided to go above a certain impoundment to hopefull find colder water and more active trout. I did, but it was not at all kind fishing I was looking for. The trout were few and far between and just didn't seen interested in any one thing. There wasn't really a discernible pattern, which is often when streamers are effective... not so today.

During my explorations of that part of the river, which I don't often fish, numerous odd things kept happening. I broke off a 2lb smallmouth on a light hookset with 4x, had a fly pop off on the back cast and bounce off my head a minute later, I almost fell underneath a decrepit old weir, and I had to save this little bass:

Lots about that was surprising. How I notice the fish was strange to begin with. I stopped to have a snack and was watching the bottom of the pool when I noticed it darting in and out of a brush pile. At first I thought it was actively eating nymphs. I made a few casts actually, which went ignored. I watched it a bit longer and eventually realized he had a line coming out of his mouth that was caught on a branch. He was 8 feet down there so I had to stick my rod down there to catch the branch. Fortunately I was able to get it up. The rig that poor fish was attached too was absurd. Two big hooks, and a huge split shot on 20lb or so mono attached to super thick braid... in what world is that appropriate on a trout stream?

The rainbow above is the second of two I caught out of the same exact lie on two consecutive casts. Usually they aren't so friendly to each other.

The last pool I fished on the way back downstream was full of rising fish, browns I though, feeding on small caddis. I got into position very carefully to cast to the biggest of the rises, made an excellent cast and presentation... and caught a redbreast sunfish. It turned out all the rises were sunfish. I walked away shaking my head and very sore.

I need a big fish, pronto.