Finally Got To Fish It

[Randall]

Wow that's a lot of water. I have to say catching wild rainbows in current like that is retardedly fun.

I've wanted to fish here for about the last year but never was able, so it was kinda cool finally getting to fish it. The day started with light rain but cleared up pretty quickly at daybreak. I started at the Blair Bridge access before dawn fishing streamers. I didn't know the river so i was real careful and shy about getting in the water so I really didn't have much of a chance. When it got light I started fishing a rubberleg stonefly with a prince dropper and got into some hard-fighting rainbows almost immediately. I fished through the s-bend downstream of the access, catching fish for most of the way, including a smallmouth on the prince. I didn't catch anything bigger than 15-16" but it I know bigger fish have to be there.

By about 10:30 it slowed down a fair bit so I bagged it and went to River of Life to check out their operation and get some water. When I walked in there were a bunch of guys in there getting set up to camp and one guy looked over and called me by name. Turns out we grew up together and hadn't seen each other in about 11 years. He was there with Wounded Warriors, apparently he had been injured in the desert and he and maybe a half-dozen others were there camping and spent monday learning to flyfish. It was about as random as it gets, but it was pretty neat. The lady in the office asked if I wanted to come out but I had to work so I couldn't.

I went to Kelly's Ford after that and got blanked except for another smallmouth, this time on the stonefly. I spent about an hour there and decided to call it a day.

I'm thinking the canoe traffic kinda turned the fish off as it got thicker. That coupled with the bright sunny sky definitely made the fishing a little more difficult. I'd definitely like to make it back during the week sometime, but I don't think I'll be strictly wading it again.

[Brian Wise]

Hey Randall,

It seems like the fish have been a little more "pissy" lately, fighting SUPER HARD (like 10" fish taking line from you )

The set-up you fished was the ticket....we did well on that set-up all weekend.

Brian

[Randall]

I'll attest to those fish fighting hard... i was definitely surprised. The bows were super acrobatic too. I kind of expected that though.

It was kinda hard to get used to throwing nymphs that big... but they worked really well. I am kinda thinking about not throwing the dropper again though because I only caught a few fish on it and it got hung in the weeds a lot plus I foul hooked about a half-dozen or so. Did I just have kind of a wierd day catching all but 2 of the fish on the lead fly? I know when I used to fish tandems on Taney I caught the majority on the dropper. I was using a 12 Prince so i don't think I really needed to go bigger, especially with the 8 stone in front.

[Snow Fly]

Randall:

Great water isn't it! I fished it for the first time in March & April with great results, lucky I had a friend with a drift boat which makes the fishing even better. I had real good luck with a Red butt Soft Hackle as the dropper. Might try shorting the dropper to cut down on the number of foul hooks, has worked for me in the past

[Randall]

It really is a neat river. It made me a bit nervous in a few spots and I had to back out and not go any farther so I'd like to get to know it a little better in that respect at least.

I tried shortening the dropper but it didn't seem to help, took it from 16ish" down to closer to 10. It may well have been a fluke day in that regard... I don't know. The main reason I was going to get rid of it is that I caught almost everything on the lead fly, so the dropper was really more of a hindrance. Truth be told, I never really use droppers (mostly because I quit using them before my cast was worth anything). I've only used them on Taney and now on the North Fork. If I go back and don't have as good success it may go right back on though.