6-24-23 Night Float

Planned a great day of night fishing, wanted to be on the water around 10:00PM and do a nice 8 mile float. Conditions were great, no moon, just had some rain and overcast skies, it was going to be perfect….Until I told my wife and she “reminded me” about a concert she was going to the night I planned on leaving. Apparently I knew about this concert, but that’s a topic for a different blog. Given the planning mix up, I got on the water around 3:00AM and fished with a friend who was down for the late start and night float.

Since I would be doing the rowing, I decided to make a few casts with a jig streamer before jumping in the boat. To my surprise, had a pretty solid take and when I set the hook, the reel fell off the rod. I figured I didn’t get it seated properly in the dark and that’s when I noticed the little butt section the reel fits into fell off and fortunately I found it in the rocks and was able to temporarily attach the reel back on. But rod failure aside, getting a strike early had me excited for the float so we hopped in and started drifting. The first section we came to had a deep bank with lots of structure, it didn’t take long before Dan hooked up and landed the fish. Great to land one that early in the float with a lot of good water ahead.

Need to work on my night time photos…

No more takes in that section of the river but we made it a spot where I dropped the anchor so we could get out and wade. The right side is pretty shallow but has some small buckets that hold fish during the day. The left side is a shallow riffle that drops off into a deep run. I took the right and my friend hit the left side. I used a wooly sculpin with a big deer hair head, given the shallow water I didn’t want anything with weight in that section of the river. That being said, my sink tip was dropping quick and coming up with a lot of vegetation. As I got into a good groove of casting, I heard some yells and a lot of splashing. Realizing that both of us left our nets in the boat, I started sprinting upstream to the boat, with the heavy fog and low visibility, it took about 20 seconds longer than it should have but I finally got the net and headed downstream. I was about 10 feet away when I heard the heartbreak in Dan’s voice, the fish bounced the fly and was gone. The rest of the trip, we never forgot to take our nets with us.

By the time we finished fishing that stretch of water it was already getting light and our night float was now a day float. We fished a lot of water and had a lot of chases, but no more takes. By 9 am we changed strategies and started nymphing the riffles and fast water. I was here a few weeks ago and had a great day nymphing so I felt pretty confident we would get into fish. We anchored up and hit a spot that is usually very productive, the water was a lot lower than I expected but we still fished it pretty hard. I ended up getting into one fish in that run and Dan landed a nice brown swinging a stone fly.

As the float continued, we kept with our strategy of getting out in good looking water and nymphing. We had some great drifts in areas where I landed a lot of fish just a few weeks prior but struggled to produce any real numbers of fish. I hooked into a decent fish right at the head of a run, where the current was very fast but the fish was right on the inside seam. It took off downstream and I went running after it, feeling pretty confident it was a rainbow. I was pretty surprised when I got it in the net and realized it was a brown trout.

The only real rhythm I got into was in one stretch of water where I landed 5 fish, the biggest of the five was a whopping 5” rainbow…I guess that’s why it’s called fishing, some days you got it all figured out and the next day you’re back into problem solving mode trying to understand where the fish are and what they’re eating! We control our fly choices and our presentations, but the rest is up to the fish!

All in all, it was a great day, did a little bit of everything and still managed to get a couple nice fish. Looking forward to heading back up for another night float, this time I’m hoping to get on the water a little earlier…