Bored so I went Fishing

Got down to the park about 12:30 just as the last two anglers were packing up and heading out. I fished from 12:30 to 4 and had the whole river to myself. Fishing was good. Lots of midging activity. My total fish count was between 20-30. I quit counting after 15 and caught several more after that. Most of the fish were between 1-1.5#. I'm not sure I ever did catch anything real small. My two best fish came on back to back casts by the bathroom hole. The first good fish was an 18 incher that I plucked from the fast water upstream of the falls. The next cast was below the falls and it produced a 21" rainbow that weighed just over 4#. The trout were midging heavily and I think a guy with a soft hackle or a crackleback on a fly rod could have really put a hurting on the fish. There are quite a few trout over 20" in the stream right now. I wasn't looking real hard for them and I spotted at least a half dozen. Nothing gigantic, but all about like the one I landed.

I also saw a trout about like the biggest one that I caught floating dead in the moss down by the river bend near the back parking lot. My guess is somebody caught it and then beat it all around and held it out of the water for a lengthy period of time trying to get pictures and stressed it to death. That is a shame. If you catch a nice fish, keep it in a net in the water while you get things ready. As you can see, the big one I caught today is still in the net with it's head in the water. If I let it flop around on the gravel for several minutes while I fumbled around getting my phone, chances are it too would have died. The net is also what I use for weighing fish. Leave the fish in the net and then clip the scale to the net. No sense is risking damage to the gills.Of course you have to deduct the weight of the net to get the actual fishes weight. I think my net weighs around .20 so the fish was just a smidge over 4#.