Trip Report: Fishing Before the Eagles

Today I planned to get out to photograph eagles along the Mississippi River with my brother and sister in law and niece. They weren't going to get to the area until around 1pm so I got up early and headed south. I used this website to find where there was the least snow cover to avoid runoff. It worked! This stream is smaller and flows south to north which also helps because the whole valley gets even sunlight throughout the day causing equal snow melt on both hillsides. Water was clear and running average for this time of year.

 I immediately tied into fish using a gray size 16 zebra midge. After landing around ten fish on the midge I decided to test out the wooly buggers I tied up over the last couple weeks. The three weight slung these flies with ease and the fish took them with abandon.

These were probably two of the larger fish I spooked today. As soon as the sun popped over the ridge line the fishing got really difficult. Fish continued to take carefully presented flies but spooked quickly upon my approach. After around three hours of poking around on this creek I headed a few miles away to another small watershed. This watershed ran high and muddy so I called it a day and headed toward the mighty mississip.