A Beautiful Day On the Water

(Click on photo to enlarge)

After the morning showers ended today, the sun traded places with the clouds and warmed things up enough to make for a very pleasant day on the river.  Air temperatures reached the mid-sixties and a gentle breeze pulled the autumn leaves from the trees and placed far too many of them on the water surface for my liking.  Trout rose consistently in the low clear currents to minutiae only they could see.  It was a beautiful day for fishing, not catching, made even better because my son Matt fished along with me.  That's him in the photo above blending in with the beauty around him as he tied on his fly.

We fished for the better part of the afternoon and had many refusals and even missed a few takes. The trout seemed to get plenty of exercise between rising up to eat naturals, and also to inspect our offerings, sometimes even nudging the fly with their nose before easing their way back down to the bottom.  I scanned the surface over and over and didn't see a thing on the water (except leaves).  We also didn't see any insects in the air but for a lone caddis.  It was one of those days where the fishing was very good, but the catching left us scratching our heads.  About 4:30 we called it a day, went to the local Italian joint, and enjoyed a couple of beers, some wings and watched football.

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What a difference a day  makes.  Yesterday it was chilly, raw and cloudy.  I fished for about two hours late in the day, saw lots of bugs, and caught a bunch of fish on a small Walt's Worm fished on a long, light leader without any split shot.  With the very low water, that's about the only way to fish a subsurface fly without getting hung up on the bottom.  I cast the fly across and slightly upstream with a mend and then follow my line with the rod tip watching for any twitches or sudden movement in the line or leader.  A simple, quick line strip to pull the line tight is all it takes to set the hook.  Here's the fly I caught all of my fish on yesterday.

        

It was great to get out and fish again, and just as good to be here writing about it.  Matt and I plan to fish next weekend and hopefully we'll have better results than we did today.  He certainly works hard at it and is due for a multiple fish day.  I'm looking forward to it.

Sharpen your hooks!