Sept 28th And 29th

[JimmyT]

Todd, Amanda and I got a late start on friday as they drove up from Eureka Springs. We put the boat in at 11:00 am and began with zebra midges (black and silver) and buggers (#10 olive) in a spot I had discovered with lots of fish two days before. It is a spot the bait fishers don’t fish for various reasons with the main reason being it’s hard to anchor in. Amanda began hooking fish right away and Todd soon followed with his own hookups. For an hour and a half we caught and released great numbers of fish until the bit slowed down and finally stopped. Guess we sore lipped them all. Todd said he sure would like to try for a brown trout so I took them to a spot. On his very first cast he hooked and landed a 21 inch brown trout on my Sage Z-Axis with a Ross Evolution 2 reel on it and Rio’s Rio Grande line. Keeping the fish off the ledges in this spot was the key to getting it in and we were successful after 8 minutes or so. Todds 2nd cast produced a rainbow which we got in quickly. The third cast produced an 18 inch brown trout. The San Juan worm weghted with a #6 shot 16 inches above the fly with an indicator another 12 feet above the shot for upstream nymphing and casting 35 to 40 feet into a pod of 8 or 9 brown trout is usually successful at this particular spot. The water then began to come up as todd hooked and released a number of bows at this spot. We then got into the boat and I showed him just how many fish were in this spot with two in the 8 to 10 lb range. We were fishing an area accessable only by boat with no wade in possibilities as the property around it is all private.

The next day on saturday I put in at wildcat with three fisherman. A unit was on which came up to two units at lunch time. We fished with caddis pupae and larvae under a hopper dropper with all the fish caught on the dropper except for two. The hopper bite sure seems to have slowed down with the various cool fronts that have come through.

Fish movement is in full swing at this time with brown trout everywhere on the upper end looking for a lie to hold up in and fatten up before the spawn. Fish down stream will soon begin to build redds and spawn. This well then move upstream and end at the end of January or early February.

The fishing is getting good during low water periods. The pattern for low water seems to be during the week from tuesday throut friday with generation on saturday and sundays. It’s kind of opposite of what one would think it should be but I’m not complaining as any low water is appreciated at this time.