The Jukebox was Kickin' Today

And it was rockin songs like:
(1) Love is in the Air
(2) Love in a Midge-a-nator
(3) Just a Swingin Like a MF

Just on continuous loop, for the better part of the day's start.

First, an image of what I have for some weeks now wanted to see:

Hark, what light through yonder window breaks? Your got-damn right Juliette, tis the east and that is the big and beautiful, heretofore sadly forgotten ball of solar joy: the SUN. Ra, Sol, Helios, Surya, Apollo. Damn, man it's up there just shinin down and it is truly beautiful. WOOHOO!!!!

What's up grass-eaters - do you see that sun? I bet you love it too.

With that prelude in place, here is the report:

Fished roughly 1000-1330 today, while the kids worked a play date with another mom and pair of kiddos. Worked out well. Along my drive to the water, I saw a number of cars parked at likely pulloffs. I was planning to go a little deeper, but I still had a flash of worry: I don't love fishing in crowds, and any total >1 is a crowd. Indeed, when I got to where I meant to go, two gents were walking upstream - apparently they had just parked and started in. Both were holding spinning rods, and both were moving slowly. I blew past them, and walked for ~15 minutes (at least a half a mile upstream) to this location.

Kind of a "slick corner" you could call it. Not a pool, but not a riffle either. Enough current to work with. I had expected to see some midges coming off later in the day, but I was pleasantly surprised to see the wonderful and beautiful dimples-on-water the second I dove in here. I had a little coffee and watched a bit... Then got into position. As it happened, I didn't leave that position for ~2-2.5 hours. Do you leave fish to find fish? I guess it depends on what you're interested in - both generally and at a given moment in time. In this case I was interested in fish rising to midges. I thought about leaving every few minutes after I'd been there for an hour or so... but the rises were so constant and so many, I couldn't pry my feet out of the streambed. Really, I should have caught more fish than I did. I know I caught exactly one dozen trout, because I was keeping score: brown vs rainbow. I was keeping score because of the first four trout I caught, three were rainbows. That seemed odd to me, so the numbers stuck in my brain from there on out. The brownies did catch up, and ended at eight of the twelve fish caught. I missed quite a few, and lost maybe 6-7. As you'd guess, the two fish that I believe were the biggest were both seen, but not landed. One I hooked, and watched him thrash at the surface and register a great, rich bass note of thwump-thwump as he shook the hook free. Looked like a great fish from my vantage point. The other looked to be about the same size, and that one broke me off. I was somewhat surprised at that, as I don't often lose trout to break offs. I was however fishing 5x tippet because today's flies were pretty small: mostly 18-20. I tried a number of variations regarding presentation: different flies, different sizes, different weighting techniques. I kept looping back to the standard though: WS #18. It didn't completely decimate these trout like I've seen it do before though. It caught a fair share of them, but it sure swung through a lot of fish without being taken today. I don't know why that happened. For a while I thought I was actually swinging under the fish, so I tried just the WS and no shot... that did work, but not markedly better than other approaches. Maybe they just got on to me a bit after seeing a fly line wave around for a couple hours. Action did seem to wane in lockstep with time spent.

Some notes misc notes:
(1) Got to watch a number of fish move from their holds to eat midges. That was cool.
(2) Most of the fish were released untouched, with minimal exposure to air. I did cradle a few. Most got the ketchum-release though.
(3) Really wish I could have kept some of these fish. Most were in the 10-13 inch range, which is great for table fare.

Took quite a few pics - I was there for a while, so it worked out that way. These highlight the beauty of trout I think. Check the detail of the fins, and note the coloration and spots of these wild brownies.







The fish in the above pic went airborne twice. Length is 12-13 inch range.