Notch One

That's a dual purpose title: imperative sentence, or compound noun.

Friday afternoon rolled around, and it required some attention. Despite the fact that flow in the Zumbro had ~tripled, Root had ~quintupled and Whitewater was up nearly two feet (no rated gauge online), I initiated a little windshield survey. I knew I'd be working Saturday, so the offset was "necessary" maybe. Another part of the deal was the 2 wt that was whispering.

I figured fishing would be at worst dogmeat and at best marginal. Ended up to in the middle somewhere.

Anyting big was pretty well blown out. Maybe could have caught some fish - not sure - but I skipped over all of that. I went to a drainage that is pretty forested, and walked up ~30 minutes - carrying the Sage in its case - not sure if I'd even break it out. Here is what the land looked like - all south facing slopes were devoid of snow, as were all row cropped areas. North facing and heavily wooded had some hanging on.

The world is a real classroom right now... You can get away from reading about watershed and land management issues, science, etc. and see with your own eyes how water moves across the land and what it picks up on its way. Because this is not a rain event, but rather a snowmelt (and a fairly tame one), the intensity of sediment loading is not great.

Here is some shallow ground water joining the stream. Dead clear. Granted these are usually running, and always clear, but the discharge was up a bit... still stone clear.


Water draining a forested area with some steep slopes... Somewhat turbid, but not "muddy" really.

I walked past a number of decent looking corners, and then when I finally turned around I stopped at this one and gave it a go. Mainly I wanted to just rig up that Sage and flip around some nymphs. I was somewhat surprised to find some decent action, despite increased discharge, colder/turbid water. I landed a couple fish, and hooked/LDRed/lost 3-4 more.

The first on the rod was pretty small, so here is the second. First few of many notches to come.
Few notes: (1) saw some midges in the air, but due to conditions, no fish rising at all, (2) seemed like the fish were in slightly slower pieces than normal, (3) I've been thinking about the fact that I lost more fish than I landed - I believe I need to adjust hook set power to compensate for the smaller setup. Need to transfer more energy from arm to hook I think.