Fishing Trip 12-7-09

[Zack Hoyt]

I have copied this from my blog........the original can be seen here:

http://justfishinguides1.wordpress.com/

I was needing to get away and wet a line…..badly. So I took Monday morning and headed to the Dam. A combination of cold weather, beginning of the week, etc, would mean very little fishing traffic. I arrived at the ramp to one other fisherman. We chatted about what was working and the way winter had dropped on us, and then parted ways.

During a high water fishing trip in which Kevin and I were shadowing Ken, I had noticed Ken row upstream from the ramp to near the very first walk in to begin the trip. This made me realize I had never really explored the upper reaches of the Beaver Tailwaters. Water level was about 916.30, the lowest it had been in as long as I could remember.

I waded up stream a little ways noticing a few fishy looking spots. There are a few railroad ties and some trees trunks in the middle of the channel. Also a few medium-sized rocks(by medium I mean a small portion of the rock was exposed at this flow). The thing that lacked was activity. I saw no fish moving around, nor any surface movement(sculpins, etc). This kinda surprised me, but I rarely see people up fishing this far……possibly the reason. There were a few small rises against the rock garden on river right.

I moved downstream from the ramp and started working the water. I am more familiar with this stretch. From the ramp to the Bathhouse Walkin, there a numerous rocks and a few large trees. the water movement was just enough to be bale to drift, and when the wind picked up, it was almost perfect. My standby for Beaver has become a size 18 Hares Ear with a beadhead. I used this with a good length of 6x tippet and caught a few very colorful fish. They seemed to be very close to the bottom and were not taking very hard. I have gone to using half a palsa or sticky indicator to better detect subtle strikes.

The clouds were covering any light that might break through. This made seeing the darker mossy bottom hard. Sight fishing wasnt much of an option except for the accasional rising trout. It looked like a morning midge hatch was coming off…….maybe a sz36. This sure didnt deter them from taking my nymph like fly. They were definitely holding around structure, and many time on the river left side of the habitat. This made casting to certain areas a bit difficult.

I worked down to the Bathouse Wakin and noticed another fly angler fishing the upstream side of the access. I stood on top of the concrete access and observed the structure. There are a series of smaller channels the run parallel in this section. Two of them end in some rock habitat that had been placed a few years ago. There were a few smaller fish schooling around this area.

A month ago, while on a trip to Harrison, my wife and I stopped by this same area to look around. We saw a few very good sized rainbows, attempting to spawn right off the rocks. We watched them for about 30 minutes before leaving. This area marks the old C&R area. This runs from the Bathouse access to Parker Bottoms.

I fished the area just downstream of the access with limited success. At this river level, the shoals that make about a 50yd stretch become very apparent. I have been told, alot of times the browns will spawn on river right of these. the fish in this section were still on the bottom but seemed to be holding tight to the structure. It took some work to get your fly to fall either right in front of or right behind the rocks. I noticed a few rises in the branches of the downed tree as well.

All in all, it was a great trip. Not a huge number of fish caught. All were very healthy and colored up very nicely.