Fished Yesterday

[Bill Babler]

Fished yesterday with Norman Russell from New Jersy, a really fine chap and very good fisherman, if I could have found him some to catch.

Started out on some extremely slick flat water in the lower restricted area, with a few fish midging around us, but in retrospect, I believe they were just slurping casings, as the top of the water is just full of the clear off white skeletons.

Midges were buzzing in our ears and it seems if you would make a complete perfect presentation using a dry as an indicator at your maximum casting distance with a size 18 zebra, on 7X you could get a few takers. Extremely hard to hook, and we were missing about 75%. No takers on the drys.

This lasted maby an hour and then total nothingness. I went from 14's to 22's with no more takes even using 8X.

Drifted 3 different scud patterns and caught a sucker on each of the colors, but no trout.

Norman being a fly fisherman said he had fished on the Rock, for bass the previous day, using spinning gear for a full day with one of the local guides and had not boated a fish, asked if there was anyway he could catch 1 White River Brown, and I with much reluctance suggested we go by Lilley' and grab a box of crawlers and sit for a couple of hours. You must do what you must do.

We sat up on the flat below Cooper, and the first fish with the inflated crawler was a really nice 16 inch brown.

Mind you it was not fast for the remainder of the morning with lots of boat traffic, but we finished up with 18 fish on the crawlers with 4 being spectacular colored up browns. Lots of nice photos and off they went to where ever these fish go.

There is no way Norman would have caught 18 fish that included the 4 nice browns in the lower restricted area in that 2 hour period. I was just not capable of finding them for him.

I should be able to have my clients be able to continue with the flyrod, but for now, I just can't get it to produce.

I will say that of the 8 fish we caught early on the midge, 6 had hook holes in their mouths and had been caught before. Two of these had bait hooks and line hanging out of their mouths. That means lots of the same fish are being caught and seeing lots of prussure.

With this week, calling for extreme heat, maby some generation, will pull some fish into the restricted area as I and several other of the boat guides are having a very rough go of it.

A couple of the locals, that fish the boat section of the restricted area were also up there and we spoke abit. They were not doing well either and both said they are maby going to just give it a rest for a month or two. Both of these guys, are retired and know how to catch fish. They both fish 365 and it is pretty sad when they are going to look for something else to do.

Maby these are changing times, but I have fished this pond since 1976 on an almost full time basis, and have never had to work this hard to catch a fish to turn loose.

[Phil Lilley]

Did you say pictures? Where are they?

[Don]

I was also at the dam yesterday from noon until 4. Was a tough day indeed. I managed to only bring five fish to the net. I used many scuds, zebras, san juans, sculpins, and egg patterns. My friend caught just as many. There just were not alot of rods bending down yesterday.

Don

[Bill Babler]

Sorry, Norman took them on a disposable and headed East with-em. Do have a pic of a very nice smalljaw and if I can get Becky to post it, It will be on the TAblerock site.

[Greg]

Well I'm glad it's not just me. I've been having a bit of a hard time the last few weeks also. Not that I haven't caught fish BUT I've really had to work at it. I was there yesterday as well from about 11:30 until 6 PM or so. The first 4 hours I caught maybe 8 or 10 fish total. A couple of decent sized 14 or 15 inch bows and one spectacularly colored very fat toothy male brown of around the same size. Then all of a sudden about 3:30 or so - I started hooking them or at least getting a hit on almost every cast. This lasted until they turned on 1 unit at about 4 or 4:15 PM. I took another 8 or 10 during this short period with most of them being small though. Weird but who's complaining? I fished for a while with one unit on and picked up another couple of fish but it was pretty slow.

I fished from the rock down to the KOA and back. I threw scuds, zebras, midges, wooley buggers, leeches. Everything in my fly boxes. Not a bad day but just not what I've gotten accustomed to. The weather was beautiful.

Hopefully the fishing picks up the further we get into fall.

Greg