The best way to cure a bad case of the shack nasties is to get out and go fishing - even if it is colder out than a well digger's back side. The thought of actually catching a few trout in the frigid conditions didn't seem too likely, but I needed to get out of the house. So, I set the DVR to record the football games and headed west towards trout water with Marty. We figured our best chance of success would be on one of the valley spring creeks. I've only been on this particular creek one time a few years ago and this was to be Marty's maiden voyage. We arrived, after a bit of driving around in circles, to blue skies and temps in the low 20s. The site of ice along the creek's edges didn't inspire much confidence.
This creek is mostly full of stocker rainbows that are much easier to catch than some of the other spring creek fish in the area, but there are also a few big wild browns. I spent most of the day on Saturday tying flies, so I wipped up a few bunny sculpins in the hopes of tempting one of those big browns.
The springs on this creek keep the water temps fairly favorable and the fishing actually turned out to be pretty decent. We didn't catch any of those big browns, but plenty of rainbows came out to play. Marty really got into a bunch of fish by dead drifting egg patterns and buggers slow and deep. Since fishing eggs to stockers is far too easy for any self respecting angler to do, I stuck with streamers and didn't land quite as many.
I did finally resort to drifting a nymph under an indicator and found a few willing bows that filled in the gaps between chipping ice out of my guides.
We fished until about 4:00 and headed for home where playoff football was waiting on the DVR. All in all, it was a successful day and it felt good to get out and catch some fish, although I'm ready for spring any time now...
This creek is mostly full of stocker rainbows that are much easier to catch than some of the other spring creek fish in the area, but there are also a few big wild browns. I spent most of the day on Saturday tying flies, so I wipped up a few bunny sculpins in the hopes of tempting one of those big browns.
The springs on this creek keep the water temps fairly favorable and the fishing actually turned out to be pretty decent. We didn't catch any of those big browns, but plenty of rainbows came out to play. Marty really got into a bunch of fish by dead drifting egg patterns and buggers slow and deep. Since fishing eggs to stockers is far too easy for any self respecting angler to do, I stuck with streamers and didn't land quite as many.
I did finally resort to drifting a nymph under an indicator and found a few willing bows that filled in the gaps between chipping ice out of my guides.
We fished until about 4:00 and headed for home where playoff football was waiting on the DVR. All in all, it was a successful day and it felt good to get out and catch some fish, although I'm ready for spring any time now...
Looks like you're about to get hammered again, according to National Weather. Doesn't look like snow, but with temps in the 20's, you never know. Nice fishing day and I hope you enjoyed the games.
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