Part 2: I continued to fish from the same pool and caught another rainbow.
This one was a little smaller, 18 inches, yet a harder fighter; a perfect specimen from which to extract a throat sample.
It had been
eating mostly size 16 to 18 green caddis larvae. I swapped the prince nymph for a size 18
green caddis nymph.
Working my way
upstream into another set of riffles I caught a 20 inch brown.
Guess what fly he took. No, surprisingly it still took the
half-back.
Hiking back to the truck a
couple of fishermen approached me and said they had seen me catch the brown
from the road across the river. They
wondered if I could hear their cheering.
They said they were visiting from Florida and wondered what I was
using. The also said they had just spent
$30 on a tribal permit. I explained to
them that the tribal permit allowed them to fish the canyon stretch of the
river which was probably even better fishing.
They thought this was that stretch and didn’t realize it started at the
tunnels. I let them know they could fish
this stretch between the dam and the tunnels on the days for which they didn’t
have the tribal permit. They quickly
headed to their SUV to fish downstream inside the reservation.
I also fished the stretch of river further upstream, right
below the dam. Across the river a guide
rowed upstream to the dam and had his clients fish right where the water came
out of the chute. I thought maybe the
guide new this as some hard to reach, secret fishing spot. I never saw them catch a single fish but
finally one of the dam workers told them they couldn’t be that close to the
dam. How would you like to be referred
to as “a dam worker”?
I ended up only
catch two fish along this stretch; however they were good size; a 22 inch brown
and a 20 inch cutthroat.
After dinner I tried the stretches of river by the
campgrounds again but didn’t catch a single fish.
The next morning, before taking down the tent, I headed back
to the other side of the river. Starting
again at the lower-most section I wanted to fish, I fished upstream through the
entire section I had fished the day before. I didn’t catch a thing, even on the
half-back. Hiking back to the truck, I decided
I would try my spinning rod before leaving.
With it I can hit the water on the other side of the river I couldn’t
reach with a fly. I tied on a floating, brown trout Rapala. On the first cast a large fish snatched it
right as it landed. Boy was I glad I
tried this last-ditch effort. I could
tell the fish was a big one. Each time I
would get it close enough to see, it would take out more line. Finally I brought it to the net.
It was a thick rainbow measuring 24 inches
long and had a clipped fin.
I checked a
throat sample and it had been eating midges, size 22 or 24. Since I was heading out this morning and it
was a hatchery fish, I decided this would be one fish I would keep.
Cleaning the fish I discovered it was full of
eggs. I had never seen a fall spawning
rainbow before. The meat was dark red. I washed the cleaned fish off at the
campground and put it in the ice cooler.
At home, the fish was the best trout I had tasted, feeding the whole
family plus my son’s family and grandparents.
