Broken Record

Date: June 14, 2008
Location: EPB&G Spot
Air temp: 70s
Water temp: ?
Hatches: ?
Fish landed: 4 browns

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

Quickdraw
Xan
TP


Well, the water was still brown. Storms over the week had brought the Curd river to over twice its normal levels, with discharges over 1,100 cfs (normal is 100 cfs). The river rapidly recovered by Saturday, with gauge readings almost exactly the same as last Sunday.

Quickdraw, Timbo and I arrived at the EPB&G spot to find a horde of fishermen upstream of the parking lot. It appeared they were part of some sort of class. We approached them, displayed our credentials, and announced that when they were ready, they too could join the F.A.G. UMC. Actually, we didn't, but we should have.

Seeing a few other fishermen at the pool by the lot, we headed downstream. It was another slow day. I had a few fish pop off, and false hooked a few more. TP and QD landed a few here and there as we continued to march downstream. They headed further downstream than I did, as I made a futile effort to catch fish. After a while, I had lost almost every decent nymph I had. By the time they came back up, they had reported some decent fish landed. QD had a "state record" fish on, but it had popped off mid fight.

We decided to fish some runs as we made our way back to the car. I decided to try the nice, deep run that is upstream from the lot. With my fly box decimated, I was now left to dead drifting an orange bugger. I fished the lower portions of the run for a short while, then decided to hit the head, where it was easier to wade. After a long, frustrating day, I landed a decent fish on the tail end of a drift. I continued to cast upstream, where the riffle poured into the run, and hooked up a sweet slab. It was chunky enough where I had trouble handling it, and wasn't able to measure it up against my rod before he was able to wiggle free (when the fuck is my new net going to get shipped?). After a couple more trout, it was time to go. I was able to end my day on a good note, with one "tri-county record" brown landed.