Biomass

Day three.

Once again, we found ourselves sleeping in after a night filling our stomachs at a Greek diner. We arrived streamside around noon and began making our way upstream to a nice run that I knew would produce in the lower flows. The weather was pristine on this particular day. The wind had died down and the sun was out the entire day promising another afternoon of strong insect activity.

The run was ideally suited for a dry-dropper combination and all three of us utilized the set up. Almost immediately, Ben was into the first fish of the day. After the first fish, we took turns fishing the run. Adam and I played around along the shoreline looking for bugs under rocks and along the bank.

After Adam and I each lost a fish, I was able to catch a ridiculous rainbow trout. It looked similar to a leopard rainbow from Alaska but obviously lacked the size. The rainbows on this river are extremely athletic fish that put on quite the aerial display to throw the hook. This fish jumped six times.

A little bit later, I saw a fish rise twice along the entrance of the run. On the opposite bank, large boulders create some great holding water so I knew it had the potential for a nice trout. I high sticked the dry dropper combination in the small eddy behind one of the boulders. In the clear water, an eighteen inch brown trout traveled backwards to explode on my dry right along the seam between eddy and current. The fight was on. Once again, the fish had some of most amazing hues I have ever seen on a brown trout.

We spent a little too much time on that section of runs but they were extremely productive. Above was a beautiful section of water. When I first laid eyes upon it, there were at least two dozen fish rising repeatedly at the same time. Adam settled in with Ben at the bottom of the pool and guided him to another trout.

The section of water was slow and deep almost like a lake. Like the previous night, the fish in the slow stuff are an entirely different story. Things have to be almost perfect presentation wise and the fly needs to closely match what they are eating. There were stoneflies, caddis, and the same round of mayflies from the previous day. At the same time. 

Ben and I caught several fish out of that pool, all brown trout. We slowly made our way back downstream to the truck as the light faded from the sky. Ben passed out almost immediately on the way home, tired from three straight long days on the water. Adam and I shared some good laughs on the ride home. He was out cold.