FlyfishingEngineer

Despite the high water myself, a close friend, and a first timer managed a great day on the river. We tried several different patterns including the black stonfly with a copper John dropper, Don's Crawdad with an egg pattern below, and black stone fly with gold stone fly below. All the referenced patterns produced a few fish, but the best by far was a black stone fly with some kind of triple bead head black nymph pattern I got at T.Hargrove a few weeks back. I only had one of them and a healthy 20+ incher made off with that after about an hour or so. That pattern outfished the others two to one. The fish were very deep and not one fish was caught from the shoals or swift chutes.

Heard rumor from a friend that a 15 pounder was caught last weekend fishing a mile or so below Turner's on a live minnow in deep water. Just wondering if there was any truth to it or if anyone else had heard about it.

Brian, Do you generally run a dropper off of the stoneflies, crawdads, and other larger flies? Also, did you have to get it right on the bottom or were you fishing at a set depth this week. We have fished the last three weekends straight and had decent luck, last weekend was a little more challenging with the water being up though we did seem to get more strikes they were just very short strikes. The most consitent fly was a copper John dropper off of a black stone. Also had to fish two drunks out of the river, theier canoe got lodged in a root wad and they were just floating down the river mid stream. We got their canoe loose for them just as the game warden arrived, he then asked if we stole any of their stuff, talk about getting the business for just trying to help someone. When we took out we noticed the same druken pair had sunk the canoe and it was completly submerged under a log at Turners.

Fished with a buddy from 4pm to 8pm, mostly above Turners. Fish were biting a bit better compared to last weekend despite the clear sunny conditions, the wind occasionally helped by putting some chop on the water. Landed fish on both a black stonefly and Don's crawdad with a copper John dropper. The stonefly produced the best though with a 22" rainbow landed at approximately 5:30 pm. Fishing around 4 to 5 feet deep with primary and the copper about a foot to 18 inches below that. We drifted on back down to turners and changed tackle and caught about 6 more very health rainbows from 6 till 8 on orange power bait.

The quality was outstanding, the only one we actually measured was the last one my buddy caught which was around 18.5 inches. I would estimate the three that I caught to be in the 16 to 19 inch range based on the size of the one we measured. The length wasn't nearly as impressive as the girth, all the fish were extremely thick with a girth more characteristic of a longer fish. We were kind of suprised we didn't hook up any goggle eye or smallmouth, is the water too cold in that stretch of the river?

Myself and a friend fished the Blue Ribbon area yesterday for the first time with fair results. Hit the water around 6 am at Turners and got above Mary Decker by 6:30. We saw the most action in the first thirty minutes we were there, catching 3 very large and healthy rainbows on Dons Crawdad. Things slowed down until midday when my buddy hooked into a 18 plus inch rainbow on a black stonefly. For our first time we considered this a fair day, we were just wondering if a 4 fish day is the norm in that portion of the river or if it was a slow or excellent day by normal standards for down there. Thanks.