Left out early Saturday morning in search of some cooler temps and no people. Figured my best shot was some headwater areas that gets little attention...which is fine by me. I took along a good friend of mine interested in fly fishing but just getting the hang of it. I've taught a few folks how to fly fish but I am no means a master, I'm only decent enough to fool these local fish and manuever very tight cover.
After a stupid wrong turn in an area I know well, we arrived at the destination at about 7:15. I hoped to see no other trucks but if so we had 3 other very close options. But, to my surprise, one joker in a mini-van appeared to have beat us to our #1 choice. Luckily, after looking around we noticed he was mixed up and fishing a tiny feeder and not the stream we wanted. After parking he surprisingly pulled up beside and asked some directions, apparently he took a wrong turn from the start and was VERY far from his intented destination. He then made a comment that gave me one of those crap eatin grins, "these streams here are just too small to fly fish." I just smiled the best I could as if I agreed and sent him on his way.
The fishing started off with a bang, I was hooked up with a healthy 8 incher off the bat as he murdered my #14 yellow stimi (fly of choice this time of year). After that we found out the browns had our number as the sun was at our backs and the spookiness of these fish were unreal. We witnessed dozens of fish dart upstream at every run and pool. The only success we could muster involved painful ninja stances and long casts which was near impossible on this headwater stream.
Somewhere along the trip we noticed one of the most unusual things I've seen while fishing. Some joker spent an untold amount of time constructing something I would have never deemed possible. A "rainbow" of sorts made from creek rocks. I was astonished at the work of selecting the right rock and then leveling key rocks with much smaller rocks. We could also tell the stack had been in place for quite some time as it had gathered moss and a fairly nasty spider web. But, it also overlooked a nice hole so I kept on fishing. After another "no-luck" run I was simply standing there as yet another nice brown took my shadow and ran for cover. While trying to get him to run back out for a better look I heard what sounded like a small rockslide. I didn't even have to lookup as I knew what happened, my buddy accidentally bumped the "8th wonder of the world" and the structure came tumbling down. Needless to say he felt horrible but I couldn't help but rag him the rest of the day and I suspect on into this week.
As we approached the end of our trip we arrived at a set of waterfalls that I was sure would call it an end of the trip as we were tired of climbing and jumping to keep going upstream and the fishing was just "off". I made numerous long distance casts hoping for one last good fish when finally a very dark colored, beautiful brown got crazy and inhaled the fly on my final cast of the day. He came sliding out from under the falls to investigate, think, watch, and then WHAM! He took it like his last meal. A long fight was had with the limp 3 weight and a few pictures were taken and he was put to the tape for the heck of it. He stretched almost 10.5" which is remarkable based on location and size of stream.
We then called it a day and rock hopped back to the truck. After easily tabbing up the small number of fish to hand and recounting the untold amount of spooked fish, I had only one thing to say, "these streams are just too small to fly fish..."
