Swattie87
Well-known member
- Joined
- May 3, 2011
- Messages
- 5,827
Had a chance to get out today with my wife, and get one last outing in with the 2020 licenses. We weren't expecting to catch much, and I had to spend quite a bit of time studying snowfall and rainfall maps from the last two storms to try to find an area that wouldn't be blown out. (A welcome problem to have after the extended low water earlier in the year.) We were just hoping to enjoy a day out in the Winter woods, try out the new packable down jackets we got for Christmas, and enjoy a beer and a leftover Christmas roast beef sandwich with horsey mayo somewhere other than the couch. (I even bought Amoroso rolls, and my FIL brought us some of our favorite beer we normally can only get when visiting him out west.)
We drove about two and a half hours north, past many, many streams that were completely blown out, but as we started up into the headwaters of our destination watershed we noticed things starting to clear up a little and look borderline fishable. We went up above one or two more tributaries and our stream started to look darn good, with a good three or four inches of snow remaining on its banks.
I didn't take a water temp, but in a word, it was "cold". My new down jacket kept me plenty warm, my feet would get cold if I stood nymphing a run for too long, but overall not bad. I had some mild line and guide freeze, but nothing debilitating. My guess is the air temp was somewhere right around freezing. Car said 32 when we got back and started for home.
We fished an egg/nymph rig, all fish came on the nymph...size 12ish dark Stonefly. Only landed three, but all three were nice fish. Probably had another three on and elude capture. My wife caught the big one, at 16", and my bigger one went just shy of 15". We couldn't dig up anything from the big slow holes, everything we caught or missed was in typical mid-depth feeding runs. So it seems the high water had them out feeding, despite the cold temps. The one larger Brown clearly had a recent large meal given its distended belly.
Got my money's worth out of my 2020 license, and probably had my best year ever for "large" small stream Trout, but this outing was definitely one of my favorites.
We drove about two and a half hours north, past many, many streams that were completely blown out, but as we started up into the headwaters of our destination watershed we noticed things starting to clear up a little and look borderline fishable. We went up above one or two more tributaries and our stream started to look darn good, with a good three or four inches of snow remaining on its banks.
I didn't take a water temp, but in a word, it was "cold". My new down jacket kept me plenty warm, my feet would get cold if I stood nymphing a run for too long, but overall not bad. I had some mild line and guide freeze, but nothing debilitating. My guess is the air temp was somewhere right around freezing. Car said 32 when we got back and started for home.
We fished an egg/nymph rig, all fish came on the nymph...size 12ish dark Stonefly. Only landed three, but all three were nice fish. Probably had another three on and elude capture. My wife caught the big one, at 16", and my bigger one went just shy of 15". We couldn't dig up anything from the big slow holes, everything we caught or missed was in typical mid-depth feeding runs. So it seems the high water had them out feeding, despite the cold temps. The one larger Brown clearly had a recent large meal given its distended belly.
Got my money's worth out of my 2020 license, and probably had my best year ever for "large" small stream Trout, but this outing was definitely one of my favorites.
