Here's a wacky one for ya, my fellow troutnuts. I hit the Pine River yesterday and the day before with two different approaches. I should describe this reach before going further - small waters, not more than 10-15 feet wide at the most, with holes not going more than waist deep and plenty of shallow stretches you just have to walk on through, flowing through deciduous forest and old beaver meadows. The bottom is a nice mixture of gravel bars, sandy runs, clay-bottomed pools, occasional rocks, silty areas, and some weed beds, with both natural and artificial log structures (the latter constructed by the Forest Service) for cover. It's not big-fish water, nor does it hold a lot of fish, but the trout are there and it is closer to home than any other trout waters around here (the Rifle is a good hour's drive, versus 20 minutes or so for the Pine).
So Thursday I decided to do a daytime expedition with some freshly tied grasshopper imitations. It was a beautiful, bright sunny day, and the water was gin-clear, in fact I was spooking some fish and watching them go flying past me in a panic. Not all of them though - I caught a nice 8" brookie and a little 7" brown that popped up out of quiet water, and some time later I saw a riser that turned out to be a brown about 8 1/2" long (like I said, not big fish water). I lost at least one more trout, possibly two although the second could have been a creek chub, as I did catch some later, including one as big as any of the trout I caught (and he actually fought hard enough I first though he was a trout). Considering the conditions - bright sunshine and low, clear water, and a small (in both ways) trout population, I felt like I had done pretty well.
However, as I went back downstream towards my car as the sun was setting, swarms of caddisflies began to appear skimming just over the water surface, whitish ones about a size 12 or 14, and then some whitish mayflies appeared, looking for all the world like Light Cahills (Stenonema canadense, which normally hatch in July so who knows what they were - Ephoron leukon?). There were probably ten caddis to each mayfly but there were plenty of both! Moving downstream, kicking up silt in a narrow channel and also chasing a great big blue heron down the river, I figured it was pointless to try throwing any more flies, but I figured an evening expedition was in order because I felt like this was more flies than I had seen on the water all summer! (I had hit a small mayfly hatch - couldn't tell you what they were because it was getting dark - early in the summer and caught a few small browns and rainbows on it, just using a #12 Adams.)
So last night I hit the water just as the sun was going down, perfect timing for the hatches, which were again going strong (there was even a second, smaller mayfly hatching amongst them). Guess what? NO FISH were feeding! And none would rise to a #12 white Elkhair caddis or White Wulff, either, other than a few tiny chubs which tried to pull them under. WTF???
It seems counterintuitive that I would have more success during bright daylight hours, when very few insects were on the water (I did see a few random mayflies, which surprised me), than I would during fading light with not one but two good hatches going on at the same time. ????? Did I go back too soon, were the fish still freaked out from me & the heron the day before? I would have thought 24 hours would have been enough time for them to calm back down, but was I wrong? Any guesses, guys?
All I can say is, trout sure are fickle creatures...
Jonathon
No matter how big the one you just caught is, there's always a bigger one out there somewhere...