6-22-24 Float Trip
This summer has been pretty brutal, with the high temperatures and low rainfall, options to fish are fairly limited close to home. The only real options are some popular tailwaters, so I called up a few friends, loaded up the driftboat and headed north. We got to the ramp around 8:00AM and shuttled the cars. We started the day in a run that is usually really productive. I used a single fly or a tandem rig with lighter flies and focused on using my casting technique to get the flies deep fast. This is something i'm trying to get better at without having to use heavier beads to get down low so that everything looks more natural to these heavily pressured fish. Jim, Dave, and I worked this run very thoroughly and were not able to produce any big numbers, which was suprising. I did land a nice rainbow at the tailout which took my single sulphur colored perdigon.
We got back into the boat and headed to another good run, the main channel that we like to fish already had a few wade anglers fishing, so we went down about 100 yards and started fishing. Jim was able to land a nice fish in the faster water and I picked out a rainbow and a brown where the riffles transitioned into a pool. They both took the perdigon down deep in the slow water. I was fishing .16 pierre sempe as my main sighter and 6x tippet, this seemed to work great in the deeper water with small flies. As the day progressed, the action continued to pick up from a nymphing standpoint.
We got to a really deep run and as hard as I tried, the speed of the water and my lack of skill did not let me get the lightly weighted flies to the bottom. For that run, I went up to a 3.3mm bead and started getting better drifts, it was also a bit breezy, so the extra weight was nice to counter the wind as well. About my 3rd cast in, I noticed the sighter stop and I set the hook and immediately knew it was a heavy fish. Was able to get it out of the fast water and into the shallows fairly quickly and got it into the net. A nice, fat brown trout that we taped at 21" decided to eat a size 18 perdigon.
We got a few more fish out of that run and decided to continue our float. Some sulphurs started hatching and we were able to anchor up in great position to reach a few rising fish. This was when things got a little western. Dave has never really fished dries on this river and it's a bit different. We typically take turns and just have one guy target a fish and then switch off. He had no idea and before we could even say a word, he had started casting over a bunch of fish and they shut off fairly quickly. As we waited for things to settle, another boat anchored up 10 feet in front of us. Not an exaggeration, I usually would have asked them if they could move a little bit outside of my casting distance, but in this case it was a father with his 6 or 7 year old son, so I just decided to pull the anchor and move on.
As we continued to row downsteam, the skies got dark and the wind really started to pick up. Thunder, lightning, and terrential downpours accompanied us for the next hour. We anchored up the boat and decided to sit on an island until the storm passed, staying a few feet away from the metal drift boat. Not sure that really would have made a difference but it made me feel better. The winds and rain did a great job of putting out our cigars, so we enjoyed a few beers in between bilging the water out of the driftboat. The last time the three of us were together in the driftboat, we were doing a night float and 30% chance of rainshowers turned into 100% for 3 hours. We used empty beer cans to bilge the water out unsuccessfully during that trip, so we learned our lesson and Jim purchased a pump that we keep in the boat at all times.
After the storms passed, we completely changed tactics and switched over to streamers which was a great plan. The browns were in hunt mode and we were able to get some nice fish to the boat. I utilized a sculp snack streamer and jigged it off the bank. In a few areas, the tributaries made part of the river dark, like chocolate milk. On 2 occasions a trout crushed the streamer immediately as it hit the water, I barely had time to recover the slack, but was fortunate enough that the hook stuck and I was able to land the fish.
The next morning brought warm temperatures and clear skies. We got a decent start in the morning and decided to throw streamers. After a few takes early in the day, things slowed down and we switched to nymphs. We got out of the boat and picked apart a few runs that were pretty productive. The same set up was working well, a single small perdigon on light tippet seemed to get the flies low and into the strike zone quick enough. The strike detection with this set up also seemed a lot more sensitive, I feel like there's a lot less guessing involved with the hook sets.
Having promised my wife that I'd be home at a certain time, we did a lot of tightlining out of the boat as we floated the river. A lot of fish were willing to cooperate, making it a pretty fruitful day on the water. Towards the end of the trip, Dave hooked into a really nice fish, assuming it was a rainbow by the way it went crazy during the fight. The rainbows on this river always go hard during the fight, not sure why everyone is always putting them down or wanting to catch browns, (myself included,) but these rainbows are so much fun. The fish came unbuttoned during the fight and then Dave was able to hook into another fish shortly after, this time he landed a nice rainbow, which was a great way to end the trip.
