Today I finished up two fly orders and celebrated by going fishin'. I didn't prepare as well as I should have and found myself on stream with flies that were too big, the wrong size, or the wrong colors. I arrived at the first stretch of water at 11am and found no surface action. I managed to entice a few hits on top before heading upstream. I arrived to caddis madness! It appeared like size 18 gray caddis and some size 16 caddis were hatching. Fish were hitting them as they skittered about the surface laying eggs. I tied on a size 14 gray skittering caddis and landed quite a few including this gnarly looking guy.
As the hatch progressed they paid less attention to size 14. I then tied on a size 16 deer hair mayfly emerger tied with an olive quill which I bit the tail off of. Right size, wrong color. I still managed a ton of fish on that fly.
At one point I headed upstream to see if I could find a bigger fish in a spot where I've scared up a few nice trout in the past.
This spot didn't give up any bigguns. I headed back down stream and landed a few more out of the areas I'd already fished before heading to another spot.
This beautifully speckled specimen put up a great fight on the Whitewater Valley Flies 9ft 4 weight. It's an older rod that I build on an older generation graphite blank. The result is a much slower action that most newer rods which makes for a great dry fly rod in my opinion. As the hatch wound down fish became more elusive. I tied on a Griffiths Gnat and twitched it over rising fish in faster water. It worked like a charm! I landed at least 40 trout by the time I left the river at 330pm. The medium sized stream I fished today was in great shape with just a slight stain. We got rain this evening which may leave streams a little murky tomorrow but as long as it doesn't rain more than 1/4-1/3 inch fishing should be fine.
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