Wow

That was the word to describe today, and in particular this afternoon. March 15, and I had a sweater on all day - no vest, no coat. Felt like a late April day. Not sure what the temp hit, but it was ridiculously warm. Em had a little get-away weekend... and when she returned, I hit the stream for ~3 hours of fishing. I met WFF on site.

There were bugs in the air, and a lot of them were midges I think. For some reason though, the fish were not keyed into them, and we never saw any nifty little surface dimples - even at a corner that is usually absolute money for that: blanked... not sure why. So, instead of swinging wet flies we nymphed a bit. The new Sage 2 wt was in play. Recall last outing was approx 2:1 ratio of fish lost:caught with that thing. Need to learn it a bit. A contrast to the 4 wt that I've used for years. Today the ratio was slightly better. Hooked and held a few fish. Lost a couple. Slow water like this (below) produced fish from deep.


Today was more about the company though - meeting someone on the stream. We surely chatted for more minutes than we fished. Fished and chatted, chat fish, chat, etc. Pretty good way to pass a perfect March afternoon. I usually fish by myself because I'm mostly a grumpy hermit. I appreciate opps to get out with someone now and then.

As for "report" items: water running low and clear - not stone clear, but damn near. This, in spite of warm temps, becuase I believe there is simply not enough volume of water on the land (in the form of snow) to have any real "snow melt" impacts. That was last weekend and the preceding week... Now we sit with north-facing snow and some ice here and there. Fishing could be good for a while I bet. WFF reported water temp ~43 F at 2 PM and ~47 F at 6 PM. We saw a few "groups" of fisherman on the stream. Every normal parking place on the roads was occupied. Given our goal, intention and pace, we caught our share of fish. Not too many, not too few. Nymphing deep was the ticket. Didn't spook any fish from shallow water at all.

Riding off into the sunset.