Hell or High Water

It was Friday night, Josh and I were frantically checking stream gauges in search of fishable water.  The recent storm front had seemed to blow-out every stream in PA.  Finally, nearing the end of our search, we came upon a small wild brown stream with perfect flows that had been left perfectly unscathed from the monsoon of a storm that had struck everywhere else.  Almost felt to good to be true... it was on for the morning! 

So we meet up in the early morning and we were on our way!  Our excitement building every mile we got closer.  Checking the gauges, once again, and it was not looking good... the flows had jumped from 200 cfs all the way to 1000!  No big deal though, we thought it would make things more interesting, us being the optimistic kind.  Little did we know as we approached our destination, that it was flowing over 1800 cfs!  There are many bad feeling in life, and pulling up to the stream on your day off and seeing  it run high and rapid is one of them.
     

   

Here we are fishing a small slack eddy , which required stealth because most of the fish were pushed tight to the banks, normally this would be shallow pocket water.

As of lately I started realizing that it does not have to be a bad feeling but a good one and can make for a very fun day on the water.  By writing this I hope to encourage some of you to get out their and give it a shot!  Hey its better than sitting at the house right?

During high water conditions, trout seem to move into relatively predictable locations throughout the river.  Which in turn makes reading the water for a high and turbid river much simpler.  In the past I would see the fast water and my initial reaction is avoidance, however now I just try to eradicate that mindset and start walking the banks to look for those fishy spots and it usually pays off.

First fish of the day, was all excited because it ate a new pattern Josh and I thought up , articulated rubberlegs, I think this will be a  future staple in my fly box.

 Not sure where we get our ideas about fishing during high water or any other time, for that matter.  Maybe they're a combination of instinct, experience, and the advice from the pros' within their books.  Whatever it is,  I think its worth it to try and experiment and adapt with things out of our comfort zone. What's the worst that can happen? You might just find a new 'niche' in fishing that may bring you great joy.  After all, fishing is part of life and that life is really just one big experiment. The Wild Life that is...

I was alittle late with this post and in the meantime my girlfriend Ashley and I made it back out for a quick outing in search of some wilds, below are a few pics we snapped.

The release

Ashley getting rewarded with her biggest native to date.

 My first cutthroat ever,  not sure where he came from.