You hear of days like this and always dream of one and when you finally have one, it is spectacular. I’m talking about a day of fishing where you can’t keep the fish off the hook.
To start the long holiday weekend I was a little frustrated to learn the water generation schedule for the whole weekend was water starting at 10am. So I decided to get a little earlier start and be fishing by 7am so I could get up to a solid 3 hours of fishing before the water started. On Saturday I decided to fish up by Beaver Dam just down from the first boat ramp. There were a few fly fishers and few bait fishers already out when I got there. I found a nice spot at the bottom of them all. It was just a little further down than I wanted to start, but it was an ok place. I tied on my size 18 black zebra Midge with gold bead and wire and set the depth just over 3 ft. I pulled out a section of fly line and began to cast to get the line out. Finally I laid out that first perfect cast and watched that indicator for all of 5 seconds before I saw it dip down below the surface. I set the hook and brought in a nice rainbow trout. I unhooked and released him and got ready to cast back out. I laid out another cast and 5 seconds later the indicator bobbled just a bit so I set the hook and brought in another. I did this again and again and again for nearly 2 hours. Yeah you read that right. I caught a fish or had a bite on just about every cast for 2 hours. It was absolutely crazy to have it so great from the very first cast. I stopped fishing a little after 9am because I just couldn’t take it anymore. I caught more than 60 fish in that period. I managed to land 4 brown trout and 2 descent sized 16 inch rainbows. I also used the same fly the whole time. I had to retie once because it got tangled, but still used that one single fly. It was amazing!!!!!
So I go to church and tell my fishing friend about my outing so we make plans to go out Sunday morning. On Sunday we start fishing around 7:30 at the same spot as Saturday. I started out again with the black zebra Midge. In about 5 minutes I landed my first trout. Then from that point it was about every 4th drift I would land another. When it got a little slower I switched to purple, then red, then cream. I caught about 5 fish with each color. Ended up catching just under 30 fish for the day. Another great day.
On Monday I ended up going by myself. I decided to fish the turn around access in front of the cabins. I started with the black zebra Midge again and within 5 min landed my first trout. There was a nice slow drift through this area. I would shuffle down another 5 feet after a few fish until I got down past the cabins where the water gets deep again. The water had no movement at all when I got to this point. I decided to move back up in front of the cabins to start fishing this section again. It was so weird when I went back up there (we are talking maybe 50-70 meters) that there was no movement in the water. I went on to catch just over 30 fish that day.
So for the 3 day weekend I had to have caught well over a 120 fish. All of them caught and released unharmed. It was an amazing weekend. I have never seen our Tailwaters be so productive.
Hope you had a great weekend. Look me up if you want to take a guided fly fishing trip.
Erik
Nwatrout@gmail.com
NWATROUT Fly Fishing Guide 