Fishing Report 5/17/2011

[MikeH]

After lurking for a couple of weeks I figured I'd finally post. I celebrated my birthday a day early yesterday fishing down from Baptist. I was interested to see how much the river had changed after the flood. It was still up a little and getting around was tricky at times but overall the flood left it in good shape; it just changed everything up. A wading staff would have been a good thing to have. I'd heard everyone was catching nothing but rainbows so I was pleasantly surprised to catch quite a few brownies the best being about 17". I Czech nymphed my way downstream then put a coiled sighter into my leader and French nymphed my way back up. The fly of the day was a #16 rusty brown biot nymph with a fire orange thread collar and a copper tungsten bead. It managed to stay as my dropper all day surviving countless snags earning it retirement to my hat. My anchors didn't fair so well and my fly box shows it. I've got a lot of tying to do before my next trip. Depending on the water I used a cased caddis I tie on a jig hook, woven polish nymphs, and stonefly nymphs very similar to a dronestone as anchors. All the browns took my dropper and the rainbows were about 50/50 between it and the anchors. Just about every spot was at least a little different than it used to be but the biggest change was at the horseshoe bend. There was a ton of debris there and I really didn't see a good place to cross. I was planning on fishing down to Ashley Creek but this killed that idea. If you're interested there's a report with all kinds of pics of the river changes on my blog. My Blog

a nice brown

the start of the horseshoe bend

-Mike

[stlfisher]

Nice report. Really liked the blog and the pics of the changes in river. Thanks for posting

[Nortrad]

Wow! What an excellent report and pictures of the changes from Baptist downstream on your blog. Who knows what the stretch down to Parker looks like. Thanks for sharing, and hope the rain doesn't make it rise up too much. What a changed river. Very nice brown!