Fishing Beavertailwaters Jan 31st, managed to catch a Cutthroat.

Nice day to get out and hit the Beaver Tailwaters for a morning of fly fishing.  Weather was great and the fishing was pretty good.  Decided to try a section of water I’ve never fly fished before.  I started out down below the Hwy 62 bridge at a private residence and worked my up nearly a mile.  The water is big, slow and wide here.  It was pretty hard to fish this area as the water was just a bit too deep to get a shot at the far bank and the water barely moved.  I worked a couple areas and managed to get a couple, but kept working my way upstream to water I seem to fish better.  I caught one fish on what I call the Pink Butterfly of Death, which is a name inspired by my daughter.  So of course I had to mention it here as well.

A little after 10:30 the bite really turned on.  The fish started rising all over and were very active.  I was throwing a midge I haven’t tied or fished before today and it was a glass head midge.  I was using the Blue Dun color and was getting some great activity from the fish, but everything started going wrong with my line.  I ended up retying my tippet 4 times and lost several flies over a 20 minute time span.  It was crazy to have such a bite going and the equipment just not responding.  I was using a small split shot with the glass bead midge and I think it really caused just enough of a change to everything.  After retying for the forth time I just stayed with the standard tungsten bead midge and continued to catch fish with no issues.  I also had great luck with the Rootbeer Midge and had a couple on Purple and Black.

I tried a couple newly tied scud patterns and didn’t get any activity with those.  Not sure yet how to tie or fish those things.  Also tried a Pheasant Tail Nymph and only managed a single bite.

On my back to the truck I stopped at a big slow hole by the abandon bridge and managed to catch a Cutthroat.  I’ve never caught one here and when talking with the guys at the Dam Store, found they are pretty rare catch.  Fun to catch something like that.

Happy Fishing and Stay Trout Tough!

Erik-