Trip Report 4-10 and 4-11

[JestersHK]

Finally made it down to Bennett for the first time this April. Forecasted weather looked really good, but after the rain and reports I figured water would still be a bit high. Turns out both were true...

I got down to Weavers Late Thursday night so no time to pre-scout the river. I woke up early Friday and headed down to my normal starting spot above the Dam and waited for the whistle. Walking over to the Dam I noticed the water was a bit high but not out of its bank or anything. Water was green and murky with visibility maybe being 3ft or so if that. You can kind of see it here.

I started jigging from the shelf and was rewarded with my first fish of the day on my first cast on a 1/16oz Bumblebee patterned wooly bugger I'll have a pic below here that will show you all the lures I used. Pretty easy at the whistle though... I fished here for about 30 minutes and after 8 or 9 fish headed on down below the Dam to start working my way down river. Got this guy off the platform right by the bridge.

Water was moving fast down here as well and was still very murky. All fishing by the rod tip for pretty much the entire day.

All of the fish were holding very low. Occasionally you would see one rise and there was some type of hatch that they would pop up and hit on the surface, but I had the most success jigging off the bottom. I would keep the rod tip bobbing up and down and then use as slow of a retrieval as possible. I mean SLOW here. Really letting it work the bottom. Broke off a few times, but was getting good hits consistently through the day. I finished up early afternoon with 4 nice fish on the stringer.

Saturday I started a bit late. Fished with my neighbors from Weavers and they showed me some nice spots on the other side of the Dam where we immediately started tearing into some really nice size fish. 1.5 to just under 2 lbs were tearing up some glow balls on their fly rods and hitting the wooly buggers on my spinning gear. Fish I saw this weekend definitely were larger and more solid than I have seen in a while. I finished out the afternoon with a nice stringer, even nabbed one of my keepers on my buddies fly rod.

Heres the line up of jigs I used. Pretty much all I needed. The bottom lure was on the fly rod about 3-4ft below an indicator

All in all had a great weekend with over 40 fish caught. Park was pretty empty Friday. Saturday got a bit crowded, but nothing too bad. I was very happy with the results given the water conditions.

Thanks for reading, and good luck out there.

JestersHK

[rcguy]

Thanks for the report!

[Johnsfolly]

Sound like a great time! Thanks for sharing your lure selection.