Top o' the marnin' to ya

AT LONG LAST

Date: March 17th, 2007 (St. Patty's Day)
Location: Canyon, Upper and Crossroads on the Curd
Air temp: low 40's
Water temp: 41
Hatches: Stone Fly's
Fish landed: 1(me) 1(Tim)

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

QuickDraw
Tim
Lance in Yetti Pants
Scooter

Yetti Sighting

Well, it was a tough day out on the river we got out there sometime around the azz crack of 11 o'clock, it's still a bit fuzzy, we started on the upper river. We were expecting to avoid crowds and pick up a few quality fish. Well at least we avoided the crowds in that spot. We pounded the riffle with everything we had. After that didn't work we pounded the Scotch in honor of St. Patrick. He must've driven all of the trout out of the upper river. After Hitting the sauce for a bit we decided that it was time to move on to the canyon because we knew that there was trout to be had there and the crowds wouldn't be too bad.

Scooter Enjoying a Fine Backwoods Cigar

When we got there we realized that we were wrong, more people than trout. walked all the way down to Alpha fished some good looking spots mainly with a San Juan worm(figuring that San Juan is a compadre with St. Patrick and that he might put in a good word for me), no dice. So with the Yetti and scooter on their way home and me and tim still with the skunk on our backs we decided at the Alpha to make the move to the crossroads. it was a long walk back to the cars and about a half an hour ride to crossroads.

We hit the water at crossroads at about 4 and were pleasantly surprised to only find one car and one guy fishing there. I was worried that we'd go all day without catching a fish, but I think San Juan finally worked his mojo with St. Patrick and I got my first strike of the day. the fish put up quite a fight, it was my fists fish on the 3wt line and it was a blast. shortly after I caught this fish the other fisherman decided to leave so we had the whole spot to ourselves, and we decided to move down river to the spot where I caught my first trout. Tim ended catching a nice one on his streamer, which was cool. With the sun getting low the big ones started to rise, I tied on a tan Caddis hoping that the luck o' the Irish would bring me a top water strike, but it was not to be. me and Tim each left with one fish on the boards for the day, but it could have been worse.

First fish on 3Wt.

The water conditions were not ideal yet, the water was still pretty brown but I thought we'd have a chance at more fish than we did. The river has changed a lot since the big flood, some of my favorite spots are no longer any good, but it looks like there will be some different favorite spots by the end of the summer.