Trip Report 5-22 and 5-23

[JestersHK]

Quick trip report from this weekend. No pics this time as fish were nothing spectacular. Only cool thing I saw was a huge nest of water snakes down by the handicap ramp under the Apron. Must have been 40-50 water snakes out there sunning themselves.

Made it down to the camper late Thursday night. Woke up Friday and did some chores and upkeep. Finally made it down to the water around 10:30 or so.

Started fishing on the apron below the dam. Water was fairly low and a bit more clear than I've seen it in a while. Was pretty slow and caught just a few 12in fish. Moved around a bit back to the top side of the dam and caught a few keepers for dinner. Didn't stay out too long and fish were a tad smaller than the ones we've seen the past few months. Over all I think I caught 9 or 10 in about 4 hours. Threw multiple maribou jigs in different colors and weights. Landed most fish on the Olive Wooly bugger with metallic highlights and a gold head 1/32 sized fished low and slow towards the bottom. Not my best day... My buddy on his fly rod had a slow first couple of hours as well. Nothing on Glow balls, and didn't start catching till he switched over to top water.

Saturday we headed down a bit earlier around 8:30 or so. Started above the dam and moved down onto the apron catching a few here and there. Bite was a little better. We headed down further below the outlet and fished right before and after the bluffs. Got into a nice school right before the bluff wall and landed about 5 fish in a row. Again all on the Olive Wooly bugger. River started to get packed the further we went down and at the main spillway from the outlet it started raining. We headed back up and took a break for the rain to move out.

I headed back down around 2:00 and fished the top of the dam. Landed a couple nice keepers around the 1.5lb mark. Had a decent fish pull the hook on me too. That seemed to be my luck. After the bite stopped I headed to zone 1 and fished from the light house back down to the dam. Caught maybe 10 more or so in that stretch and finally called it a day.

I probably caught 80% of my fish on the olive wooly bugger. Threw a bunch of other stuff and even drifted a few different patterns under a float. The low and slow jigging seemed about the only thing that would produce fish consistently. River got pretty busy on Saturday being the holiday and all, but you could still find a quiet spot for a bit if you kept moving. Overall a pretty average trip.

Good luck out there.

[brittsnbirds]

What was your buddy throwing "top water" (aka dry fly)?

[JestersHK]

Not sure what his dry fly of choice was. I'll see if I can get ahold of him.

[Wornica]

I fished last Friday and caught fish using these on top of the water: Renegade, Griffith Gnat and a blue Crackleback.

[brittsnbirds]

Thanks!