A guide trip & a hour of personal fishing before winter hits

[Brian Sloss]

On Sunday the 26th I took Dan and Dean from Columbia out in the drift boat. Dan had purchased the guide trip at the Mid-Mo Tu banquet where I donated a guide trip for the charity. Both were super nice guys and I'm glad they enjoyed themselves. The fish were biting pretty well as long we were getting down to them. Eggs and the bitch creek were working the best. Dan was an experienced fly fisher and landed well in the double digits. Dean was on his 2nd trip fly fishing and first time outside the trout park. Though Dean landed slightly fewer than Dan, He was well into the double digits as well. From the 1st island down, we were catching fish pretty regularly. Dean caught a beautiful wild male at the first island, which is rare as that is not a wild trout stronghold like Mary Decker or Little Huricane shoal. Anyway, just about everywhere we thought we'd get a fish we got one. The exceptions were the back side of island 3 and Little Huricane Shoal. The water may have been too swift to get down as well as we probably needed to. We even had a fish to release at the boat ramp as we were pulling in to end the day. A good time was had by all.

Today I got out for about an hour with my 7mth old yellow lab at Graveyard hollow (island 1). Considering Finn has finally decided that labs do love to swim and is getting with the program, I was happy with the four fish I landed. Not bad with an excited puppy swimming through your hole constantly. For now I'm happy he is enjoying the water, but soon he will have to be trained to stay out of the water until the fishing is done. It was nice to get out, as we are expecting very cold temps. by tonight with some possible freezing rain.

Finn diving off the hillside into my hole

[flyfisherman]

Nice report Bryan, looking at possibly fishing late next week if the temp is above 45.