Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Things slowing down, fish heating up

Weekday business has slowed to a crawl which has allowed me to pursue a few other activities for recreation. Yesterday Amy's Dad and I planted a few acres of alfalfa for wildlife on his property, and I have been brush hogging some plots that are in need of replanting this fall. We have several acres of food plots here that I typically rotate year to year for birds and deer. Last spring I planted millet and sorghum in several plots and as it is now maturing, songbirds swarm out of it as you drive by, blue grosbeaks, indigo buntings and goldfinches seem to be the main visitors. I will soon mow some of that down and plow it which will bring in the doves, and then reseed with wheat and clover for deer and turkeys. These plots are down around the campground and because we enjoy watching the wildlife we don't hunt in the riverbottom.

Monday morning I received a phone call from Brian Sloss the owner of Eleven Point Canoe Rental who wanted to come over for an afternoon of fishing. He arrived at around 1:00 and since my shuttles were done I decided to join him. We both were a little apprehensive about the fishing prospects as a bright sun shone directly overhead. This apprehension was quickly put to rest as I quickly caught and released a parr marked rainbow on the far side of the island. As Brian worked down stream ahead of me he caught several small browns and hooked and lost several others. It seemed like red was the color they were after as I caught my first fish on a red soft hackle, and Brian was catching his on a Bloody Mary #10. Brian saw the beating he was giving me so he waded up and gave me one of his magic flies. Not long after I caught a 10" brown quickly followed by a slightly larger one. Disappointed with the performance of the hot flash, under which the bloody mary was tied, I decided to put on a yellow variation which I had just started tying this week. Not long after putting this on I hooked into a gorgeous 15" bow which took me for a ride all over the run just in front of the campstore. Not to be outdone, the original hot flash which Brian now had tied on caught the biggest brown trout of the day, a fat 14 incher.
After catching and releasing a dozen or more fish we moved down to slippery riffle where I had hopes of another dozen hookups. That was not to be the case but we did add another 4 or 5 fish to the count, mine caught on the golden hot flash and Brian's caught on a squirrel nymph. The squirrel nymph is tied with a yellow body and seemed to be working nearly as well as the bloody mary. We concluded that red and yellow were definitely the colors of the day so when you come down be sure to have an arsenal with plenty of those colors in tow. It did seem like the larger flies were catching larger, but fewer fish.

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