Report 5-24-08, 5-25-08

[Brian Wise]

Saturday morning started off mostly cloudy with a 30% chance of rain and a 100% chance of lightning hitting within 1/8 of a mile from us.

We put in just above Jack's Riffle at ROLF and fished Jack's from the boat (since wading that far out would have been a 'touch' tough ) and hooked a rainbow real quick on the swing after a drift. Couple of casts later hooked a nice rainbow that proceeded to release itself. Fishing super deep with a Rubber-Leg and a Red San Juan Worm. Drifted through the rest of the farm and switched to a streamer rod with a sink tip and a T&A (thanks Leonard ) and fished the hole directly below ROLF, rolled a decent fish and decided to wade into Cave Riffle. Cave has been pretty hit or miss for a long while now but with numbers of fish generally being lower than it used to be the average size has gone up...that'll work. No fish until the bottom of the riffle and landed a nice, deep 17" rainbow on the San Juan. The first island below ROLF is where it got a little freaky, saw some lightning so we got off the water (and put the rod down) and not long after that BOOM, lighting that actually boomed three times--it was weird and freaky all at once.

There was really no solid pattern to the fish but fishing was good until the sun started beating down and pretty much shut them off. Very little canoe traffic, mostly because we put in early and got off the water at 2:30.

Sunday I guess was opposite day. Mostly sunny for most of the day--wasn't expecting good fishing at all. Put in at the same spot, no fish at Jacks, no fish drifting the farm, no fish in the hole below. Cave riffle produce some of this years young of the year rainbows. In the dead sun a hole below the first island produced 5 fish in 6 or 7 drifts and one of those fish was nice but did not land it. Switched things up quite a bit Sunday, fished 3 different colored Rubber-Legs and several different droppers and all caught fish--San Juans, RFSN's, a new Prince pattern.

Everything came off bwo's, caddis, a couple stones.

Definitely what I would call a weird weekend of fishing but it was really good.

Brian

[huz001]

Brian, Cool stuff. I think we might be in for a pretty good early summer ?? I'll be glad when the real wading starts; but then it is harder to catch fish.

Steve

[Brian Wise]

Hey Steve, I would be suprised to see anything less than 400 cfs this summer. Did you happen to see any of the springs on the river when you were here? They are for sure super-charged and thumping out some really nice water, and if they keep running a touch cloudy we 'may' have a little color to the river for a long while too. The river should be noticeably cooler this summer (not that we ever really have to worry about temps anyway though.) Looking forward to some night fishing!

Brian