The Caddis Hatch

The caddis hatch wasn’t as prolific as last week but you could still see clouds of caddis here and there. You can watch them clumsily dance on the water laying their eggs. There were a few fish rising indicating the fish were actively feeding although the risers seemed to be the smaller trout. I tied on a couple of emerging caddis imitations with simulated wings and a trailing shuck.

I hurried downstream a mile or two so I could work my way back fishing upstream. Catching a fish on the first cast gave me a clue it would be a great evening. This was quite a different experience from the streamer fishing I did last week. After catching a few whitefish, including a large 18 incher, I hooked the brown I was looking for. It immediately jumped into the air. While it jumped I loosened the tension on the line slightly so if the fish landed on the line, the line wouldn’t break. The brown measured 19 inches long.

I worked my way up to the next hole, fishing promising places but without luck. At this point I had noticed that the sun came out, no wonder. The next hole I reached was formed by a bend in the river. I didn’t catch anything through the deeper section, but as I fished the top of the pool where the shallow water became deep, I hooked another large brown. It measured 19 and a half inches long. Hooking this brown in the shallow portion right before the river turned deep reminded me of a previous brown from the “Streamer Fishing in the Riffles” blog. I will have to remember to pay particular attention to the shallow portion of rivers right as the water starts to become deep.

As I left the river, a group of sheep came over to greet me. I had seen the farmer feeding them earlier. The youngest lambs of the group followed me all the way to the fence where I climbed the ladder over the fence and said goodbye.

Something Learned

On every trip to the river I try to learn something. I am constantly trying new things. Some of these things I have discussed previously; such as strike indicators. Currently I am learning to become a better streamer fisherman. I am trying various streamer patterns to find which ones work best, which ones have better success with hookups, which get the most hits, the best ways to get the streamer near the bottom, tandem rigs, casting, etc.

Since I am currently in the mode of learning to better fish streamers, I rigged my rod with streamers. I placed the large grey and white rabbit fur streamer as the point fly and a dark yellow big eyed streamer as the dropper. I left my 4 weight nymphing rig at home since I was planning on streamer fishing. I expected to find the river a little high and a little off color since it is the time of year for the run off. Surprisingly, the river was at normal flows and clearer than I expected. I was excited to see this. When I reached the intended access point there were six cars parked there. I had never seen this many cars at one access point before. To avoid a crowd I turned around and went upstream to the previous access point and I was the only car parked there. This was a stretch I had never fished before. As I got out of the car I was greeted with a caddis hatch. There were bugs all over the place. Then as I neared the water they coated the shoreline. This gave me another haunting suspicion that I had left the wrong rod at home.  By the end of the evening this proved to be true.

This ended up being a great stretch of water. There were plenty of features and deep pockets. It looked like perfect streamer water. I fished downstream moving quickly until I met the fishermen coming upstream from the other direction. Then I turned around and methodically fished upstream working my way back to the car. I had several hits but none connected. This is one thing I am working on, finding streamers that hook up more often. What I envision is a bulky streamer that has a short shank hook so that if the fish hits the head of the streamer; like it should, it would get hooked with that short shank hook. At the same time I would like the streamer to have a long hook so that if the fish strikes the tail from behind, it would also get hooked. This way I would get more hook ups, rather than just strikes. It is exciting to see the big fish come up and hit the streamer like they did this day, but it would be even more exciting to hook and land them.

Streamers In Tandem

One variation on rigging two flies is to tie the dropper off the bend of the hook of the point fly. To do this you tie your first fly onto the tippet as normal. Then tie a piece of tippet to the bend of the hook. This can be done with a clinch knot just like you use to tie on the fly through the eye of the hook. Tie on the dropper six to twelve inches below the point fly. This tandem rig is often done with two nymphs, but can also be done with a dry fly and a dropper. A common use of this is the hopper/dropper system. You use a large hopper pattern as the point fly, then tie on a nymph as the dropper. In this instance, you can even use a longer tippet section for the dropper depending on the depth of the water. I’ve tied the dropper three feet below the hopper on certain rivers. The nice thing about the hopper/dropper system is that the hopper acts as a strike indicator. When the trout takes the nymph you will see the hopper go under or pause momentarily. What’s more, sometimes the trout will take the hopper. Or, it will rise to the hopper, refuse to hit the hopper and eat the nymph.

You can set up a similar rig with streamers. This is what I did on my last trip. I tied a large grey and white rabbit fur streamer onto 2X tippet for my point fly. For the dropper I tied on nine inches of 3X tippet to the bend of the point fly using a clinch knot. Then I tied on a bright yellow streamer. This way I was able to present two different colors and sizes of streamers. This system worked quite well. I discovered another advantage to using two streamers. There is usually one streamer which is more visible than the other. You can concentrate on seeing that one. This might be the issue with the trout as well. They may notice the more visible one first, be reluctant to strike it but be willing to strike the one that blends in with the surroundings like a natural minnow or sculpin.

The first fish I caught took the point fly, the large grey and white rabbit fur streamer. It is fun to see these fish dart out of their dark hiding places and vigorously strike a streamer. I then switched the yellow streamer for a black cone head wooly bugger. This is what the second fish hit. These weren’t big fish like I was hoping to catch with these streamers, but they were sure fun to catch. They were 16 to 17 inch browns.

Cadillac Ranch

Fishing in the upper stretches of the Weber River has helped avoid the main portion of run off this spring. Although a little high and slightly off color, it is definitely still fishable. In certain sections of the river you see lot of old, rusty cars along the bank. I fished by a line of them Monday. They were lined up like rip-rap preventing erosion along the bank. This caused the river to be a little deeper so I gave this “Cadillac Ranch” stretch a try with my nymphs. I was using midge pupa imitations and caught a medium size white fish. Then I remembered the last time I did throat samplings that I talked about in my blog “Stomach Pumps”. There were several bright green caddis larva in the sampling. I hurried and switched my nymphs from two different styles of midge imitations to two different styles of caddis nymphs.

I notice often that right after I switch patterns I immediately catch something. I think the reason is that the nymph is dry and when submerged into the water it has air bubbles stuck in the fly’s material, fur, synthetics or whatever was used to tie the fly. These air bubbles are easy to see, attract the trout, and probably look like insects that use gas to rise to the surface.

This time was no different. On the first cast after changing flies, I got a strong strike. I could tell it was a big fish because it took the line deep and I was not able to work it into the shallows for a few minutes. The trout didn’t jump and ended up coming to the net quite easily for a large brown. In fact, he seemed real calm. He just laid there and let me take a couple of pictures. He measured 19 and a half inches. I think he wanted to say “go ahead and get this over with and put me back in the water”. When I did release him back into the water, he just hung there in the water for a few seconds so I could take another picture. He swam away so slowly I was even able to get a second picture of him in the water. It was the most cooperative fish I’ve ever caught.

One Last Cast - Continued

For the last cast of the day I punched it hard against the wind, directly upstream. I aimed at the clear water within inches of the rock lined shore next to the fast, cloudy water at the head of the pool. I immediately started to strip line but the line stopped, then shot into the fast, deep water. It was as if this fish had this escape route planned for just such an emergency. It then jumped, trying to throw the hook. It jumped again. In the air above the water this fish looked huge. It had to be the biggest fish I had hooked yet on the Weber. My heart was racing.

Where would I land this big fish? I headed down to where the pool shallowed out, but the big brown also started heading downstream, getting ahead of me. I tried to turn its run back upstream and it worked. He headed back into the deep water directly across from me. I reached the shallow water next to the grass lined bank and as I reeled the fish in closer I pulled the net loose from the magnet. As he caught a glimpse of me with the net he took one last run into the deep pool. By now he was getting tired and I was able to lift his head above the water and slide his head into the net. With the tail still hanging out, I lifted the net and luckily the fish slid in.

I carried the net with the fish to the shore and tried to get a picture. It kept trying to jump so I placed the net back into the water to keep the fish wet and let it calm down a bit. This next time I laid it on the shore he let me take a couple of pictures and get its length. He measured 21 and ½ inches. I need to get a scale so the next time I catch a fish like this I can weigh it. He was hooked solidly. I wasn’t able to pull the hook out with my hand so I grabbed my hemostats and pulled the hook out from the side of its mouth. As I gently placed the fish into the calm water, I hoped he would hang out a second so I could get one last picture of it swimming away. As I grabbed the camera from the shore however, he gracefully swam back into the safety of the deep, dark water.

The Last Cast

On every fishing trip there is always one last cast. This could be because it’s time to leave in order to make it home by the promised time, because you are tired, the fish aren’t biting so you might as well call it a day, you are just cold and hungry, it’s getting too dark to see, or maybe you’ve caught your limit. With catch and release fishing it’s usually not the limit that’s the issue. For me, it’s usually because I know I’ve got a considerable distance to hike back to the car in order to start home in order to make it home by the promised time. But there is always “one last cast”. If it’s been a day were you haven’t caught anything, this is the cast you are putting all your hopes on. If you’ve been catching a lot and the fish are still biting, it’s because you don’t want to stop yet, you know you’ve got to get going so you say to yourself; just this one last cast and then you’ll go. The hope of course, is that this last cast will be the one that catches the fish of the trip, that trophy you’ve been hoping for. Other times it’s not by choice but by circumstance. For instance, it was the last cast because I just got a snag, my line broke and by the time I could re-rig, it would be time to go anyway. Or, it’s getting late and I just caught a nice fish and I might as well end the day on a high note, with the “just caught a great fish feeling”.

I got to work early Tuesday because it was going to be raining the rest of the week and this would be the last day I’d be able to get out on the stream for awhile. My last meeting went until 3:30. I hurried to the car, hooked up my I-pod and started to the river. As I got to Wanship, I stopped by the river near the I-80 overpass to check the condition of the river. It was little high and only slightly off-color but still fishable. Last year, according to my calendar, the full blown run-off started on this day, April 20th. I remember I was going to be meeting up with Paul on Thursday to go fishing but when the water was blown out on Tuesday, I e-mailed him to say we better hold off. He responded that he was a “day late and a dollar short”.

I drove downstream to one of the last access points on the river before hitting Coalville and the Echo Reservoir. My thought was to give the river as much time as possible to clear the silt from the river flow that was being dumped into it by the stream that flowed through Wanship. As I entered the river, I noticed that it was still quite off-color and high, but not to the run-off stage yet, still fishable. I started out with a black, rabbit fur streamer. After an hour and no fish yet, I switched to a larger, green two-hook fly with big eyes. I saw a few fish follow it but none that actually hit it. After an hour using it, I switched to the yellow fly I had caught the large browns on during my previous two trips. After a half hour with this fly I had still not caught a fish. This high, cloudy water is really taking its toll. By now I had worked my way upstream to the next access point and it was time to start heading to the dirt road and hike back to the car. But wait; one last cast! To be continued...