Report 3/27

[Nick Williams]

Took the morning to go spend some time unwinding today at the LIR. I was interested to see what shape the river would be in since the dams have stopped running for work being done. It wasn't much lower than I expected, but the moss was already pretty overwhelming already. And the best part, the fishing ended up being much much better than I expected!

Spent the whole day at Watts right below the parking lot. The fish were midging, so I started with a midge under a palsa. Took awhile to find the right color/size combination, but the biggest key for the midges was the correct depth. It was interesting because I could watch the fish and set the hook before the palsa ever moved, and most of the time, the closest fish would completely ignore it, but a fish 6 feet away would zip over and grab it. Fun to watch. Caught all browns on that, except for one rainbow. All the browns still seeming pretty small, as in stocked recently small. I seem to recall someone telling me that the browns should grow pretty quickly, but other than the few and far between larger browns, I haven't seen any difference in size.

Changed up to a olive pine squirrel, and the fishing really picked up, in both size and quantity. Just a slow strip back to me. I picked up no browns with the pine squirrel though, all bows. And they were all very beefy! Two of them were a solid 14". Broke off three fish on three pine squirrels in a row, so called it a day there. It was very cold once the wind picked up, but all in all a great day on the river.

Tried to attach two picks of one of the browns from the GoPro, but I have to resize it first. The browns definitely had some fantastic colors, didn't even look like a hatchery fish.

[benalt]

Great report! Good to hear that things are doing well, despite the low water.

[joshuapaul]

Nice report. Thanks Nick!

[okiebug]

Thanks for the report, I was out there the same day, and your right the fishing was good. I noticed that yesterday they were releasing water, so hopefully that washed some of the moss out.

[Nick Williams]

I'll have to check that. The moss was pretty bad, but I seem to have better fishing with the moss throwing olive and green 'moss colored' flies. Probably just a theory, but still seems to be what happens for me. What was working for you?

[JCWolfe]

Trout will eat that moss, check there belly next time you keep some to eat

[Nick Williams]

Haha

[okiebug]

dead drifting, zebra midges and buggers. Nothing too creative, they were hitting good so I never got to deep into the fly box.

[benalt]

Man oh man