Dries Required

Upstream and to rising fish only...well, almost anyways.  I headed out for another short adventure this afternoon.  The original goal was to head for the high country but I had lots to do at home so decided to save the longer trips for another day.  Thankfully, there are fish to be had a bit closer to home.

Another trip, some more brown trout, and dry flies!  It doesn't get much better than that if you ask me.  I tied on the same dry fly that I fished last week along with a soft hackle dropper.  After picking up only 2 fish on the dropper, I noticed someone heading up the road with a fly rod in hand.  Suspicious that I had been fishing behind them, I persevered and started moving more fish right about where they seemed to have left the creek.  As brown after brown nosed the dry, I realized that the dropper was pointless.  The fish were telling me what they wanted and only a fool would ignore the mandate:  dries or nothing.

I removed the dropper and rummaged around in my fly box for just the right fly.  A mixed hatch was on including good numbers of mayflies (duns and spinners) but I decided to show the fish something just a bit different.  A yellow Neversink Caddis found its way to the end of my tippet, and now I was ready to show these browns how we do things back in Tennessee.

A few casts later I hooked the first of several nice chunky browns.  The fish began to come with regularity, even after the poor fly had been mangled to the point of no longer floating very well.  Several of the nicer fish were caught after betraying themselves with a rise.  I never did determine what the fish were taking although they probably weren't being too selective and simply feeding on the entire range of insects available at the time.  Regardless, the Neversink Caddis must have looked like candy.
 

The last pool had some serious big fish potential.  A big fish for this creek would probably be 16 inches or so but some spots just scream big fish and this was one of them.  I never did find that big fish, but I know its in there.  One of its more reasonably sized friends was willing to play though.  This one fish rose a couple of times and by the boil I knew it was larger than some of the little fish I had caught.  I cast and finally saw the fish swirl about the time I was ready to give up.  After a brief fight, I took a couple of pictures and then watched the fish swim under an undercut rock to recover.

I'm still thinking about cutthroat.  Next week, maybe.  I have a long weekend and am ready to do some exploring...