Winter 2011 Fishing

It's been a while since I've updated the blog hasn't it -

Well, here's a quick update on 2011 so far ...

My first fishing trip of 2011 was back on January 29th.  I woke up late that Saturday morning planning on hanging out around the house.  Heidi suggested however that I get out and fish for a few hours.  I thanked her, quickly packed, told her "Thank you" once again, and headed up towards the "local" small streams, which are only about 1-1/2 hours away.

Last year I had set the goal to fish at least once a month.  Unfortunately, I fell short of my goal missing out in June and December.  I wasn’t really planning on setting the same goal this year, but if I was going to get out fishing before the end of January, well maybe I’ll give it another go in 2011.

The weather looked pretty good, but I was a little concerned about how frozen over the stream would be.  I didn’t have to worry.  Sure, there was a fair bit of snow on the ground and ice at the edges of the stream, but most of the water was open and very clear.  It was actually warm enough that I didn't have any trouble with my guides icing up.  The fish were very spooky given the crystal clear water and low winter flows.

With small black stoneflies crawling out of the water and small midges and mayflies hatching, I was able to catch my first fish on a little surface action.  An unseen rainbow shot up out of a knee deep run to take a size 20 snowshoe hare emerger.  With my first fish of 2011, we both took home souvenirs.  I managed a quick picture just before my tippet frayed and the fish took off with my hook.  Fortunately, the CDC emerger I tied on next worked just as well, bringing another rainbow and two browns to hand.

Last weekend I went back up to the same stream with a friend.  The morning started off at a brisk 23 deg when we got up to the river at 7:30.  My fingers were anything but nimble when tying my flies onto my tippet, but I was looking forward to fishing again.  I took my Tiger Eye 2wt rod once again.  I normally use a 2wt DT line, but this time I decided to try the rod out with my 3wt WF line.  Instead of respooling the line onto my 3100 reel, I left the line on my OB-4.  I really like my OB-4 reel, just not on my 6’6” 2wt rod.  Still, casting with the 3wt line was really smooth.  All the short casts I needed to make were a breeze with the heavier line, and the rod was still able to cast out to ~40 ft when I wanted.

I remembered all the small black stoneflies I had seen back in January and put a size 18 black copper john about 24 inches beneath a small dry fly.  A couple fish took the dry fly, but the copper john did most of the work that morning.  I managed to catch 8 fish with a good mixture of rainbows and brown trout.  It's been a week since this fishing trip, but I'm still pretty pumped up about that day and these beautiful fish.  I hope you enjoy the pictures.