Closing Out March

Just spent half hour looking around tying bench scouring for marabou with rust flakes mixed in come from old hook bends; bent hooks on retired carp flies.  Broken hooks.  DB eyes loosely spinning.  I clipped materials and triaged parts into good trout streamers.  Small; with hook at back.  Such that the fly has the streamer silhouette but can be easily eaten.

I don't think too much about flies other than I know what I need in my box to employ a few basic methods.  Nymph; fish streamers and keep them down.  Split shot more important than the details of the nymphs and it ain't close as they say.  Maybe some small dark dry flies.  Point here is that I had come up low on streamers; needed some; materials didn't matter much as long as they were short; heavy and drab/dark with hints of flash.  And good hook gap.

Been fishing through others this year; mainly through kids; on this day though I went down in the valley looking for some more aggressive trekking; looking to go hard and hit the triple threat not of species but of application: nymphs, streamers, dry flies.  Down some steep grades; no guard rails; big road cuts of sandstone.  Going from up top down to the bottom that was made by moving water.  

Identity of the region.  You won't catch me not appreciating sun on face walking a stream.  Can't get over it.  Even after a while.  I hear people complain about fishing license cost.  And worry about ticks.  Sure; interesting points.  But what are you going to do stay home.  World ain't wallpaper someone said.

Turns out I was rushed first thing.  Weekday.  I checked every road crossing.  No cars.  Parked mine at one.  Twenty minutes in, I looked back; sure there was another gleaming motor vehicle behind mine.  And a biped making his way up toward me.  Kind of bugged me.  The whole valley not to mention the whole world; weekday.  Probably selfish but the deal I wanted was solitude.  Yes selfish.  My approach was to jog upstream for fifteen minutes.  Give him some water and keep me from having to talk to a human.  This fish pictured here was from the second hole I addressed.  I liked it because it was an aquarium just thick with BNT and suckers.  I dead drifted through that glass and this aggressive fish jolted.

Wasn't long and the dry flies came out.  Every foam run like this showed risers.  BWO.  I switched over and caught 2-4 smallish fish from a number of good reaches.

This old fly has been good.  For years even it's held up.  Small dark BWO.  I think #18.  I remember using it on this exact stream probalby 10 or more years ago.

And she died on this day!  Trout tooth.

After catching quite a few on top that deal ended when I spooked a giant, giant specimen from the bottom of the run/pool I'd just worked with a dry.  I got pissed and switched to streamers.  Immediately started getting the next-older year class as the average fish.

Like the spots on this one.  Wow.  White fin edges. Deep mouth.

Eroding bank.  Does not always equal poor habitat.  Enough fall here to scour and there were some boulders.  The corner was just silly with fish.  All charging and head swatting at streamers quartered upstream.  See it all unfold.

Lot of life in the rocks.  The benthos.

Keep a low profile; a necessity in this life.

Walked back out fishing a streamer slapping fast at woody debris hoping to move a big fish. Got a few to hand including a BKT that I watched eat; no bigs though.  April's coming; could be a good one.