2-11-24 Floating Tailwaters

With a few warmer days earlier in the week, I planned a trip to do a little streamer fishing on a popular tailwater. I talked my dad into joining, as well as my friend Jim who is always up for an adventure regardless of the weather. Not that it would have made a difference in my decision to go fishing, but I was pretty surprised that the water temps where peaking around 38 degrees. My original guess would have been lower 40s, but either way, we were still going to go.

The water levels were perfect for throwing streamers on a sinking line and not having to worry about the line getting wrapped on rocks. This is definitely my preferred method of streamer fishing on this tailwater, but the colder water temperatures had me second guessing my strategy. I threw my nymphing rod in the boat to give me a plan B just in case the colder water temps made the fish a little less likely to chase.

I started out rowing, Jim took the front seat and was committed to throwing streamers, my dad was in the back and I set him up with a bobber rig. We launched the boat around 9:30 and didn’t have much action early on in the float. At 10:30 my dad hooked into a nice brown that took an egg fly on the point, after a decent battle, we were able to net the fish and get it released back into the water. The fish was surprisingly chunky, which is a great sign that it’s been gorging pretty well after the spawn.

First brown trout of the day

We didn’t make it much farther downstream when my dad landed another brown trout, it took the same egg fly on point. At this point in the day, it seemed like nymphing was the ticket and my old man was constantly reminding us that he landed 2 fish to our 0s.

Jim did have one hit, which was reassuring that the fish were willing to chase. Him and I switched and he took over on the oars. I started out fishing a drunk and disorderly with a moderate retrieve and wasn’t able to move a fish after 30 minutes. I switched over to some other flies without deer hair to try to get them deeper and I slowed my retrieve down quite a bit. Still wasn’t able to get a fish to chase so I decided to run a jig streamer on my euro rod. This way, I could keep the fly near the bottom and maybe get a territorial strike.

It didn’t take long before I had my first take, I saw the fish attack the streamer right off the bank and gave it a strong hookset but wasn’t able to penetrate the hook. With the nymphing rod, it’s not that easy to get a solid hookset from a far distance, there’s a lot of bend in the rod and flex in the line that take energy away from penetrating the hook. It was motivating however to finally get a take. We went around another bend and again, a fish attacked the jig streamer. I set the hook with everything I could pull out of my line hand, skating the fish across the surface of the water. I could see it’s head shaking back and forth as I pulled it toward the boat, as I reached for more line to strip in, it gave the fish just enough slack to come free. At that point, I decided it was time to get back on the sticks and let Jim do some fishing.

We went through a section that usually produces some decent fish on streamers and Jim was able to get one to eat pretty aggressively. He gave it a solid strip set but failed to connect.

Jim working a large slow cut out in the bank.

We all have our assumptions about what we think the fish will do given our past experiences, however the only constant I have found is that the fish don’t care about your assumptions and will do whatever they want. Starting the trip, I thought the water was too cold, fish would be lethargic and holding in deep pools, not likely to chase a fast streamer. Jim was ripping that streamer in when the fish attacked, I watched his retrieve and was thinking, man that is too fast for a cold day like today, man was I wrong! Both of the fish I moved that day were not in the deep, but right off the bank, no more than 18-24 inches of water. Again, I assumed they’d be at the bottom of the deepest holes.

We moved around a bend in the river and the current was ripping pretty fast but it had some great seems on the other side. I did my best to position the boat just on the outside of the fast current and back rowed as fast as I could to slow the boat down. I looked up and Jim’s rod was bent as I picked out a nice brown trout running downstream right along the boat. Unfortunately that one came unbuttoned and I don’t think there was anything Jim could have done to stop it. He had a great strip set and had the fish on with plenty of pressure, but it found a way to come off.

Jim and I switched spots in the boat and I started out with the jig streamer this time. We didn’t make it far when my dad got snagged in some really shallow water. I wasn’t even casting the jig streamer because I knew it would get snagged almost immediately. When he popped the rig out, it got tangled so I dropped my fly in the water and grabbed his rig to help untangle it. With my fly just sitting in the water, about 10 feet in front of the boat, I noticed a big brown shadow dart out from the bank and head directly for my fly, I couldn’t believe my eyes. Never would I have guessed a fish of that caliber would be sitting in an area maybe 12” deep when the water temps were 37 degrees. I grabbed my rod and gave it a few twitches but couldn’t get the fish to eat and it slowly made it’s way back to the bank.

I continued to fish the jig streamer and got another fish to eat, this time I was able to get a solid hookset and land the fish. Like the other 2 fish I missed earlier, this one was also right along the bank.

White sculp snack for the win

After landing that fish, I got back to rowing and decided to anchor up in a spot that generally holds some good fish and it’s pretty close to the take out. We usually never make it to the take out with the sun up, so I figured we might as well fish this section pretty thoroughly. It didn’t take long before Jim had a take and was able to land a very silvery brown trout. Perfect way to end the trip, no one got skunked and we were able to connect on a few nice fish. After all that, we still made it home in time to watch the second half of the superbowl, although I fell asleep about 10 minutes into the half. Ohh well, I’ll take fishing over watching football every day of the week.