Fishing Report Upper River

[Sam Potter]

Fishing Report November 12

Thursday, was a clear, warm day and the bugs were everywhere in the morning. Tricos were dancing in the sunlight, tiny olives were fluttering on the water trying to get airborne and caddis were doing their egg dance. There were some rainbows sucking the Trico spinners on the far bank and didn't have anything close to that size. I left my tiny flies in the truck. I was trying out a 7wt Loomis that I had just finished making and I didn't have my micro box with me. I did however have my caddis box, so I found the smallest fly I had, an 18 tan and brown soft hackle. I greased the line and even put a little on the fly. I picked out the closest rainbow, they were all rainbows as far as I could tell, and dropped my fly about a foot in front of his nose. Unfortunately he ate a spinner just to the right when my fly drifted down to him. On my second cast the fly came close enough and he sucked it in. I was laughing to my self the entire time I reeled him in. This wasn't a picky fish, so I guessed that he had not been in the stream too long. When I got him in, he was missing a pectoral fin and he had a washed out color. The second fish down stream was closer to the bank and a little smaller. I probably made a dozen casts to him and he refused the fly every time he looked at it. This guy was picky and I knew that, with the fly I had, I should probably find another fish. 6 or 7 feet below the second fish was another rainbow, about the same size. I dried the fly, greased it up a little and made my cast. He swam about a foot to his left and took the fly. This rainbow was also washed out in color and about the same size as the first fish, around 11". I moved down stream to the next pod and picked up 3 more rainbows and a small brown, that was stocked this past spring.

I eventually found the fish I was looking for, a nice brown that was about 21-22 inches. After going through a half dozen flies I finally found one he was interested in, but it got by him before he could eat it. On the second cast with this fly he moved over a couple of feet and picked it up. I had him on for about 3 minutes until he wrapped me up around a rock and broke off. I ended up catching a couple of browns around 15-17 inches out of that hole and realized that I needed to get home, I had basketball practice in about two hours.

It was a good morning, with lots of bugs and feeding fish. I will try to get out on the stream again, when the deer season is over. If you have to be on the water, make sure you have some hunter orange on. The stream is very low and very clear, so move slow and keep your distance.

"A bad day fishing is still a great day"