fishing report 08/11

[JobyKSU]

I needed a break, so I headed up to Beaver Tailwater this morning.

I got there really early and found that, surprisingly, there were at least two other groups already on the water. So much for my solitary experience. As it turns out, quite a few anglers had the same idea for the day that I did, and a large number of float-trippers decided to hide from the heat on the tailwater as well.

I entered from the walk-in access by Crane Roost and headed downstream to the big pools. The water was nice and low, and there was decent flow. Add to that the numerous jumps, slurps and whorls in the water, and I was excited. After some experimentation, I resorted to my fallback - a Partridge and Orange soft hackle.

Ah, old friend, it's good to see you again.

I was not disappointed, and quickly landed a few feisty, Beaver-average rainbows. About this time the flow simply stopped, as did any hope of getting a drift.

Fishing was pretty slow until about 10:30 when I vacated the lower end of the C&R and headed upstream. About this time, the flow started back up again. After additional nymph-experimentation, I tied on a black and silver zebra beadhead nymph under a foam ball indicator. Wow. Fished downstream towards structure I felt like a superhero. I worked my way upstream and caught fish after fish. In one case, I caught the same beautiful fish twice in a span of about 5 minutes.

The flow was definitely variable. When the wind was down, it was easy to spot pods holding with flow or cruising when the water was more still. Casting 10 to 15 feet in front of the pods led to strikes more often than not. I'm not a cast-to-strike ratio guy, but for a long while it was easily approaching a strike nearly 50% of the time. A number of the takes were soft and subtle. In contrast, I may be somewhat soft in places, but subtle is not regularly used to describe me. As such, I failed to convert a large number of those strikes. C'est la vie.

On the bright side, most of the fish that I landed fought hard and enjoyable battles. The majority were in the 10 to 12 inch range, but it was not unusual to catch 13 or 14 inchers, and I even landed one thick-bodied, pale-pink 15 inch football that actually forced me to use my drag. Is it just me, or are these fish getting bigger?

After taking more than my share of fish, I decided that you can only ask a fly to do so much. In a short, personal ceremony, the zebra midge was honored by being retired to my Hat-of-Fame. On my way back downriver, I found that a black copper john produced quite acceptable results also. I finished the day off with a remarkably long struggle with an 8 inch rainbow that didn't want to give my red-butt soft hackle back.

As the warning horn sounded (anyone else notice that it is the key tone for the Mickey Mouse song? M I C, see you later. K E Y, Why? Because we love you...) I began my trudge back to the car, satisfied with the thought that I like having Beaver Tailwater as my "home waters."

Life is good.

Tight Lines,

Joe