The Middle D

We watched the flow and saw it drop Monday night from around 1500 to just below 900. On Wednesday we got there around 11 and it was gorgeous. Periodic sun breaks, wind was off and on, and a great water level. I started down below the big cut in the rocks with an Adams and got a nice redside of about 10 inches from the soft water along the edge of the main current. Fished hard for a while longer in that whole section but never had a rise and never saw another fish.

I then moved up to the wide flat area by the old barn / mine on the far shore, which is just before the river narrows and flows into the fast deep water. With the water level where it was there was just a nice soft riffle from the rocks on the bottom that made it look very fishy. Since there was nothing happening on the surface Mark and I ate lunch and then fired up a stogey and switched over to a nymph rig with stone fly and dropper. I joked that after all the gear changing the fish were probably going to start rising - and then I looked out at the stretch I wanted to fish and saw it boiling with risers. The fish were really slapping the water and I didn't see any bugs, so I figured they were after emergers. So back to the dry. This time I put on a Clark's Stone essentially as an indicator, and a soft hackle caddis emerger as a dropper. The first brownie grabbed the Clark's stone while I was letting it hang at the end of the drift. The current was cooking so it was a great fight on the 3 wt., coming in at just about 12 inches. The risers kept moving to different spots, and it was too deep to really get in close range so I just tried to be systematic in covering the likely water. The next brownie nailed the emerger, also while hanging at the end of the drift, it was similar in size to the previous fish.

The biggest thrill of the day came while drifting the nymph rig - the indicator took a dive and I lifted the rod into what felt like a nice fish. As I watched my line go streaming off the reel, unable to turn it back out of the current, I started running along the shore chasing the beast. Then about 5 minutes later when I got a bunch of line back it took off upstream on me. I'm thinking what kind of monster is this??? When I finally got it into shallow slow water I discovered the answer - it was a big-ass sucker foul hooked in the back. When I saw that I quickly pulled my fly free. None the less, that one really got my heart pounding - what a blast !!!

I think that 900 cfs is actually a perfect flow rate, there is enough water to allow the fish to move up into the flats, and it's still wadable. I think if the sun had been out a bit more the bugs and fish would have been more active, but it was a still a memorable day.