Baptist 7/9/2011

[MikeH]

I finally got back down to the Current on Saturday. Gas prices have been forcing me to be a warmwater fisherman so it was great to finally go for trout. Arrived at my favorite access to find the tricos hatching. Unfortunately there weren't any risers. There was a nice layer of fog on the water so it may have either hid the bugs from the fish or hid the rising fish from me. I rigged up with a Polish nymph and a little biot nymph dropper and started Czech nymphing my way down the run by the parking lot. I had to rely entirely on feel because of the fog but I actually did better than usual. About the same time the fog was lifting the canoe hatch started. Luckily it seemed like everyone started at the same time. So instead of random appearances throughout the day there was a full blown armada in the morning. As the sun rose I noticed the fish were really keying in on my smaller dropper so I switched up to a frenchy leader. This set up works great for smaller nymphs. I would wade a leader down, then work the water up and across(especially the shady banks) then wade down another leader and so on. I stuck with this for the rest of the day. Eventually that ice cold cooler back at the car became too tempting so it was time to head back upstream. I fished a lot quicker going back up but still did pretty good. Amazingly I had the same fly on point the entire time I was using the long French leader. It was a tungsten hare's ear variation on a jig hook. I really like how the jig hooks don't snag bottom as much but about 5 hours ticking bottom without losing it was awesome. As far as numbers go it was probably my best day of the year. I didn't catch anything too big but did manage a few fat rainbows. There were a couple really exciting moments though. First I briefly had a double until the fish on the dropper broke off. I also had a short encounter with a nice fish. I was working an undercut bank when my sighter barely twitched. I set the hook into something big. Once I got it close enough to see I realized it wasn't big. It was HUGE. After it saw me it hauled off down stream while I did my best to stop or turn it. No such luck. I was almost into the backing when my line went dead. I'm going to have to bring some streamers and give that spot a serious once over because I want to hook that fish again. That's about it on a great day fishing. There's a link to my blog in my signature if you want to read a longer report and see some more pics.

-Mike

[3wt]

makes me want to learn to be a bettery nymph fisherman.

[Nortrad]

Always enjoy your reports, don't know when I'll get back down to the river. The Baptist stretch has been very promising this year, potential there for a big fish. The holes/spots seem better this year.