My Novice Report

[Stein]

Karla and I set out with great aspirations from the state part boat dock at 8:00 Saturday just as the last few drops of rain fell.  Went straight across the river and I caught a 13" rainbow on the first cast with a zig jig.  Smugly I tell my wife, "see, we are on for a 50 fish day".  Little did I know how wrong I was.  About 9:30 I frantically text Ham asking for advice as that one first-cast fish was the entire action for the first hour and a half.

He did his level best to text-coach us onto more fish.  "fish the riffles, those are active fish"  first riffle results in a fish for Karla.  Again a drought.  All told we put five trout in the boat, all 12-14" stockers.

It was very surreal having a blanket of fog covering the river morning, noon and afternoon.  There were a few breaks here an there but it was fairly consistent.  I did see a guide put his clients onto two nice browns, one about 24" and the other maybe a couple inches shorter.  They looked to be dragging some sort of prepared bait.

We spoke to several other boats.  People were very friendly even though it was very crowded.  Most indicated that the morning was good but they hadn't caught anything past 10:00 or 11:00.

Weather started threatening and some lightning nearby put us off the water at 2:30 and we just hung it up early since the afternoon was a bust.  I caught one rainbow after lunch on a small floating rapala jerk bait.  The rest were caught on zig jigs.

Had to head home today for the 4th but will be back down the 5th through the 10th and will try again.

[Ham]

You had better luck the next time out.