Trip Report: Muddy Water Brookies

I have a lot of vacation time saved up so I decided to take off today and Friday. My original plan was to fish all day, both days but after getting a ton of rain yesterday/last night and much more in the forecast I saw my only chance to get out fishing this morning. I arrived at one stream and hiked a ways upstream hoping to find cleaner water on a tributary. I arrived at the confluence and muddy water was pumping into the main river from that tributary. I walked back to the car and headed to the headwaters of that tributary. The water had a good stain to it which gave me good cover to stalk the copious trouts only a few feet in front of me!

This brookie took the pink butted pheasant tail. I was high sticking and pulled him out of the water with a quick jerk. Although I couldn't see to the bottom of the pool it was likely there were more fish.

The sun shone bright but again, the stain on the water kept me concealed. This brown put up a pretty good fish in such skinny water.

This chunker came from the same spot. After catching a good number of both brookies and browns from the same pool I was hoping to catch a glimpse of a tiger trout! No dice, but I did catch a few more brookies.

 After catching around 1 1/2 dozen trout on the pink butted pheasant tail I switched to a pink san juan worm. I landed another dozen or more on that fly before switching back to the pheasant tail for a few more. This spot always has a ton of fish stacked up but unless it's fished in low light conditions or with a good stain on the water the fish scatter before you can get within 50 feet of 'em. I'll have to keep this spot in mind next time I'm aching to fish when most water is blown out.

Stay tuned: I hope to get out fishing again soon but I have never ending fly orders and a few rods to build.