Yellow Streamers

After I went to all the effort of switching the strike indicator setup and switching to caddis imitations, guess what happened. I caught a couple of fish and then hooked a bush on the other side of the river. Now usually the water is not so deep that I can’t wade a little deeper and un-hook my terminal tackle. This time, however, the water was much too deep. I pulled the line hard enough that I lost my whole terminal rig including both flies. I had caught enough fish on nymphs for the evening and it would be getting dark in an hour. I tied on a large, yellow streamer and decided to work my way back upstream.

It’s fun to see brown trout jump out of the water chasing a streamer. In fact, sometimes streamer fishing can be quite visual. One trout jumped twice trying to catch the streamer and missed both times. I wondered if I was stripping too fast. Another time, I cast the streamer into the deep water right next to a rock. Immediately a fish hit it right at the surface but didn’t hook up. Again I wondered if I was pulling the streamer too fast. I will experiment with stripping speeds. The next hole I encountered was caused by a bunch of large logs and lumber. This time I purposely made sure I was working the streamer a little slower. I let the fly sink a bit and started slowly stripping it in. A huge trout darted out of the depths and I could see it avoid hitting the fly from behind and swinging around to hit it from the side at the front of the streamer. I waited until it hit the fly and I lifted the rod. He immediately darted back into the depths from where he had come. I held tight and made sure he couldn’t go in far enough to snag the line on the logs. After a few seconds I was able to work it out of the depths and out of the log jam. This time he headed downstream but I was able to keep him working the tension on the line and eventually moved him into the shallow water were I could pull it onto the shore. I immediately measured him since he looked so big. It only measured 18 and ¾ inches. Its big head and broad girth sure made him look big. What a gorgeous fish!