Labor Day Wknd Report

[BrianK]

Made it back down for a few hrs fishing Sat, Sun, Mon. Mixed results but overall very good.

Saturday pm after the canoe traffic settled down, got to fish for a couple hrs.

Surprisingly few fish but the one I did catch made up for it. A fat 21" brown.

Caught a few glimpses of him swirl at something on the surface and knew he was just sitting down there.

Threw everything in the box at him then finally nailed a big white woolly with a ton of weight just as 2 canoes passed by and almost hung me up.

Good to have my 11 yo photographer with me.

Sun morning with thick fog on the water at daylight, picked up several rainbows on a small brown sculpin pattern. very deep. Shut off about 8am.

Sun nite fished about an hour from 10-11 but to no avail. Hoping to pick up the stray monster brown throwing some big hardware.

Mon am a little slower but still managed a few. A buddy of mine down camping with our family caught his first trout ever.

A NF rainbow is a good way to start.

Monday afternoon before heading out, Landon and I paddled up river to play around.

I had heard stories of stripers coming up river this year and a few being caught.

Hadn't seen any until now! There is a marauding band of stripers or hybrids (or both)in the first pool above McKee bridge. Looked like about 20 fish in a school ranging from 18-30++ inches!

Wondering if anyone has seen this many in other pools or if they might be concentrated here.

We know it can't be good for the baby rainbow (or anything) population in this stretch of river.

Anyone heard anything from the MDC on this? could they shock and relocate them?

So I went back for the rods and spent an hour sight fishing to em. Nada. They were very spooky. or just full!

Good weekend. Let's hope Gustav doesn't blow things out too bad. Doesn't look good for this wknd though.

Brian

[Aaron Mills]

I was out floating on Saturday and saw the stripers in the same spot you did. I didn't see much else there except suckers and a couple of bigger browns. They are definitely a problem for the trout.

[Brian Wise]

Great report Brian!

The pod of stripers that you saw have been up there for a while. The way the MDC is looking at it is that if they were to shock them they would really have no place to put them to relocate. Basically it would mean they would have to bring tanks on the boats with them as they do the survey and that would take a considerable boat along with a lot of room in the considerable boat. The last I hear they are going to leave them and let the public cull them out.

For sure they aren't 'good' for the river. But the way I look at it is the trout are BY FAR the smaller number of fish in the river compared to chubs, suckers, minnows so if there are 20,000 chubs per mile in the river they would more than likely eat more of them than anything. Also guides that fish for stripers around here have said that when they cut the stripers open they saw a ton of crawfish.

Brian

[BrianK]

That makes sense.

Sounds like another nitetime fishing opportunity.

Some of those things were huge!

I was thinking about coming back down this wknd but not so sure now with the river running about 1500cfs right now.

Brian, have you checked out the river since the rain? wondering if it is still clear enough to fish or muddy?

Looks like the Bryant didn't get too blown out so smallies might be an option.......

Do you have any time this wknd or are you booked up? I may be down solo!

( i left you a voice mail also)

Brian