Fish & Bird

Date: April 27, 2008
Location: Famous Original Ray's
Air temp: 50s
Water temp: ?
Hatches: ?
Fish landed: 19 (18 browns, 1 brook)

Present members of the Fly Anglers Guild :|: Upper Midwest Chapter, for this outing were:

Xan


The WI inland trout early season came to a close recently. If I'm not allowed to fish for 5 long days, then you best be sure I'll take advantage of the WITES closer. Car trouble prevented Quickdraw and Mark for joining me, so I fished by myself, very much so, as it turned out.

I decided to hit the Original Spot, a place (along with Eagle Pass) that I had yet to fish this year. While I arrived to find one truck in the parking lot, I never saw a fisherman the entire day. For 8+ hours, I had the entire stretch of river all to myself.

Starting at the pool just downstream from the access point, I started picking up fish and losing flies in a quick fashion. 4 fish and 4 flies later, I began to make my way upstream. As I was making my way up to the big pool, I came across this fellow:



Focused on the river in front, I didn't notice the sky carp behind me until I was startled by its unwholesome hiss. As it was, I did not have the tool to reply with the hiss of hot lead, so the winged shit-factory was left unharmed, though unhappy, while I continued to fish.

I decided to explore that day. Moving past the gallery, I hiked and fished all the way to the next access point. I didn't really find much good water, though I was able to pick up trout along the way. But, good to do it once, I suppose.

Hiking back down to the great pool, which I had not bothered to fish the first time around, I sat on the bank and gave my weary legs a rest. In a daze, staring at the water, I realized that this was the only spot, on any west central stream, that resembled Montana water. Deep and with a healthy current, I had never caught much here. Realizing it was time to use Montana tactics, I adopted the mantra of "Big Fly, Big Fish" ("Big Fish, Big Fly?"). I tied on a large stone fly nymph I had purchased, but not used, for the Brule. With a small emerger dropper, #1 split shot, and wooden orb of an indicator, I started extracting decent (though not piggish) trout from the depths of the run and pool. Four fish later, I called it a day.