It felt good to be out; putting on the waders, rigging up the fly rod and stepping into the river. Ice fishing is fun, but it’s not my passion like fly fishing.
I tied on the usual small nymphs like the bead head hare’s ear and bead head pheasant tail with some flash at the collar. I put on one small BB split shot and placed the small thingamabobber strike indicator about four or five feet up the line. The water was two to three feet deep. Action was slow so I fished somewhat fast. The first hour I did not catch anything.
As the sun was going behind the mountain, I got a snag which broke off one of my flies. It dawned on me that with the water so murky, I should try a San Juan Worm. As I was tying it on, I figured I might as well tie on a second one since I hadn’t been catching anything on the nymphs anyway. I tied on the typical red one and then also a dark brown one.
I cast these into the faster deeper water in the middle of the run slightly upstream from where I had been fishing the nymphs. At the end of the drift of the first cast I had a strike. I was pleasantly surprised when the fish jumped and it wasn’t the typical white fish of winter. It was a medium size jumping brown trout.
Get this, I took out the red San Juan Worm he had in his mouth and started to place him in the water and he was still attached. The brown worm was also in his mouth. This was one hungry trout. With the water being murky I should have started out with San Juan Worms in the first place.
I kept working my way upstream and got another snag. This was also in the deeper, faster water and I couldn’t get to it so I pulled the line until it broke. By now it was starting to get dark and I had a good mile to hike upstream to the car. With one of my flies broken off this was a good stopping point. As I started back, I noticed a drop off in the water right where the fast shallow riffles met the deeper water. I quickly crimped on a split shot and decided to give it one more try with the one fly I still had on. I cast up into the fast, shallow water and let the fly drift naturally with the current into the deeper water. After a couple of casts I moved upstream a little further and tried again. Just as the fly hit the deeper water the fly was attacked by a dark, fast fish which quickly darted upstream. He kept taking line, swimming upstream. I couldn’t tell how big he was, only that he was strong; still taking line while swimming upstream. I adjusted the drag slightly to make it tighter. Oops, this was a mistake. The fish broke the line. Like all stories of the fish that got away, we will never know how big this fish really was.
