It was a pretty afternoon today on the river, even though it was a little airy again. It was airy enough to create a complete riffle on the long, wide, and deep stretch of water I fished. This was a familiar water, however, I decided to approach it from the opposite side. Looking back now, I'm glad I did because it placed me on the inside lane of the wind; hidden behind a tall island that served as a perfect wind-break.
The side I chose is a more wooded area that overlooks the river and two different runs of water. Here there are a number of trails that will take you to both runs and it's nice to walk through those woods.
I took one of those trails down to the long, wide, and deep water and found a small sandy shoal that would allow a fly fisher to wade out about five feet. It was all roll casting today - no room at all for a backcast, but, that didn't seem to bother the trout.
Even though I was attempting a thirty to thirty-five foot roll, I would soon discover the trout were only eighteen to twenty feet in front of me. And... they would slam the fly - it seemed like they were hooking themselves. Fish after fish, fun... oh, so much fun. It wasn't a fish every cast, but, the cast-to-catch ratio was pretty darn high.
Never changed patterns this afternoon, just kept tossing the streamer. The trout were finicky in how the fly was moving. They wanted it deep in the column with little movement at all. Although I was slow-crawl-stripping all afternoon, I do believe if a fly fisher had fished under an indicator they would have actually done better.
Looking upstream, two good size submerged boulders catches the eye so an investigation is launched. The boulders are large enough for a fly fisher to stand on, but, the water between me and boulder was hard to judge. It looked to be chest deep, but, could have been deeper so I deemed it too dicey to try today since I was fishing alone. Maybe when someone is fishing alongside I'll try it.
What is amazing to me is that all these wonderful years I've had on this river, new pools and pockets are coming this way. The structure of this river is absolutely amazing with countless places for the trout to hide and make their lies. Exploring this river more is part of the goal of my Chapter 58.
The weather is predicted to change for the worse in the coming days. Today was a good day to be on the river Blue.
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