Rock Bottom

 

The routine was the same as it was every other week, day dream while at work about fishing and put those day dreams into reality over the weekend. The temperature finally decided to break towards the end of the week and I hoped this would cause the fishing to heat up. I was wrong again, but it did get some of the bigger fish on the feed if you were willing to work for them. I met up with Ross early Saturday morning as usual to and we headed to one of our favorite boulder strewn, mossy bottom, ankle breaking creeks. This creek could eat up the best of waders and Saturday didn't disappoint. I spent most of the morning doing the Stonefly shuffle on the slippery bottom (And likely earning myself and early hip and knee replacement) , falling in seemingly every other step, and often rolling down stream (The Simms wading jacket played hero again).  Despite fishing a usually productive section of pocket water, it only yielded two fish. A strip of water that put around a dozen fish in my net the last trip. This just goes to show the difference a week can make in trout waters. At least they were gorgeous examples of God's fish.

 

They don't get much prettier than him

Another pretty little pocket water fish

We quickly cut our losses and switched to a plan B that we talked about on the way down. We went to explore a section of creek where we thought some bigger fish may hold. Well, it didn't disappoint. Although numbers weren't as high, we picked up some solid fish for this watershed.

This feisty little guy came out of a root system to crush my nymphs
 

Awesome looking fish that Ross nymphed out of a big chute 

Hard fighting fish that made me run down stream after him.

After quickly picking up a few nicer fish, we started working up into a harder to access part of the creek. It was a beautiful section of holding water and I picked off occasional fish working upstream on a size 22 midge (still amazes me these fish will eat such a small bug in pocket water). Ross did equally as well on a Euro style nymph he ties . Despite being a slower day it was rewarding as we started to pick off some better fish for this little gem. It's only a matter of time before we hit our goal of a 18"+ inch fish out of this fishery and this is likely the stretch that it will come out of. Until then, these pretty little guys will do.

 

 

Thanks for reading! Tight Lines!