I had today off work because I was going to head to the Milwaukee area to see some family. I still plan to go but decided to wait until Sunday. With a day off work and no real plans I considered staying home to tie flies, then I thought better!
I arrived on stream around 1030am and headed to a quiet little run that always produces a fish or two. It yielded two little brown trout. Because I was fishing a State Park I decided to look around for where rainbow trout have been stocked. It didn't take long before I found 'em!
Initially they came on a size 16 tungsten beaded WD40. After a while I tied on a Matt's Midge dry fly dropper in a size 20 and that took quite a few fish. The dry fly dropper is pulled under by the lead fly and gives the trout something a little different to look at which can be a game changer when fishing heavily pressured waters like our state parks.
This was the big fish of the day. I'd guess he measures around 15 inches. After fishing one spot for a few hours and landing a dozen and a half fish I moved to another area where they sometimes stock and sure enough!
This was the most colorful rainbow of the day! At this point I had switched over to a gray size 16 zebra midge with a tungsten bead. I could see a ton of fish through my polarized lenses and almost every dead drift caught fish for the first half hour of fishing at this second spot. Some of these fish looked pretty darn big too!
With a cold wind blowing all day my hands were really cold. As I type this my fingers still feel a little clumsy. When I got too lazy to tie on 5x tippet the fish took notice and my catch rate slowed. I did lose a good number of flies due to light tippet and saturated fly line.
By about 345pm I decided to call it a day. Now I remember how much it sucks to have my fly rod guides ice up every three or four casts! It never got above 30 degrees today but the fish didn't seem to mind. I didn't try to catch any on the surface but a few fish did rise throughout the day. I notice no bugs in the air.
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