Fly Fishing Thursday On Blue River

Beating Mother Nature... almost.

A Thursday afternoon is as fine a time as any to spend a wee bit of time fly fishing on the Blue River.  Yesterday everything seem to lay out fine for me.  My young boss at the mercantile store needed a ride to our Tishomingo mercantile and in his request I found some leverage

The deal I made with young boss was he would indeed be transported by yours truly, if... I could run over to the river for an hour or so.  Handshake deal, we were good to go. 

Stopping by the bunkhouse I gathered the gear and soon we were on the road.  On the drive down I felt like I had just pulled a coup... a great triumph, if you will, because here I was getting to fish before the Arctic blast of air hit later in the day.

After dropping the boss off I headed straight for the river only stopping at Scotty's for a bit so I could fetch the "less litter on Blue" boxes Chris Adams had built.

At the river it was hard to keep from noticing how emerald the water looked on this day.  There was an overcast sky with a southerly wind, and the color of the river cause me to have concerns about the effectiveness of the bugger brown.  But, to the bugger brown I stayed true and paired him with an olive WD 40.

The first two trout would escape before reaching my hand, but the third came in for the touch courtesy of the WD 40. The next cast would result in both the bugger brown and his mate to be lost and on their way to the locker deep below. 

Tying another bugger brown on, I once again paired him with a WD 40.  However this time the 40 was in the color red.  The next ten casts resulted in nothing so I decide to move on upstream.  Upstream started out the same way... little action and some very subtle takes.  Finally, the bugger brown brought in a trout.

Then, the action slowed again and I begin to wonder if I was suffering from pattern fatigue especially with the emerald colored river in front of me.  Off came the bugger brown and on went the bugger olive.

First cast with the olive resulted in a fish and two more would also come to hand.  Olive color, in emerald water, under an overcast sky. 

So, here I was on a Thursday afternoon standing in the river feeling pretty good about beating the weather.  Mother Nature must have read my mind or saw that smirk on my face because it was about then the rain showers came my way. 

The showers weren't constant and certainly not down-pouring, but they came in waves - one after another.  Of course the rain gear was back at the bunkhouse and all I had on was a light sweat shirt.  The bait fisherman that had been on the bank near where I was fishing called it a day in light of the recurring rain showers, and the fellow told me he hadn't caught a single trout anyway.

After the fourth or fifth wave of rain shower I also decided to call it a day, so I gathered my effects. waded out of the river, and shoved off for the home harbor.  The fishing today certainly wasn't hot and heavy and I would leave with only five trout to my credit.  But, they all were wonderful in their own way.

One thing about that old cowboy hat I wear... it keeps a lot of rain off of my skinny frame.  And, most certainly a little rain will never hurt this hat - it could use a good cleaning for sure.

Very few souls on the river today and in a way that is sad.  Why so many are not coming this year to take in the love this river gives freely is puzzling to me.  On the other hand with so few souls fishing we don't have to worry about claim jumpers.

Gold Mining And Claim Jumpers

There are times on Blue River we will find a certain pool, run, or stretch of water that yields bow and bow.  It is like a gold mine and we suddenly go from fly angler to gold miner in the eyes of many others.  To them, it appears that we have indeed struck the mother lode of trout.

Not always, but to a fair degree just the same, when we are prospecting and hit it big like just described... we will get company.  Now, there's nothing wrong with company calling if they bring along a reasonable knowledge of etiquette.  However, far too often etiquette is no where to be found. Anglers will simply wade in on you, crowd you out, throw across your line and generally be rude about it all.  I call them claim jumpers.

 

There is plenty of room on Blue River.  Let us all be respectful of one another.



 







Chapter 58 Day 40 - Trout Season

A Baker's Dozen

It's hard to believe that today day forty of trout season arrived.  It seems like the season just started yesterday.  At this clip, we will be half way through trout season at Blue river before we know it. 

It was a gorgeous day on the river today.  Not arriving until half past mid-morning, the weather was still crisp and somewhat nipply, if you will. 

Pushing the ponies across the river at Hughes Crossing we turn into the campsite overlooking Horseshoe Falls and Ted's Pool.  Once there, I didn't know whether to slap leather hard across the ponies backside or to pull up on the reigns and stomp the foot-brake.  Within the campsite were a lot of tents, vehicles, and people. 

Deciding to stake my claim in the water no matter what, the ponies were pulled back and hitched.  A trail was struck to the water and to my utter amazement there wasn't a soul on the river at Ted's Pool.  Either folk had fished early or not fished at all because of the cold morning temperatures. 

On the tying desk last night, I found a pink woolly bugger... yes pink.  Can't remember why I tied a pink bugger - probably to torment pan fish or something, but, I grabbed the fly because I wanted to see if a trout would bite this... uh, not your usual fly you want to wade around the river when others are watching. 

I tie it on and send it sailing into the stew.  Damn thing catches a trout.  Send it sailing again and there is a hard strike followed by a hard hook-set.  Trout gets flies, fly fisher gets empty tippet end. 

Then an olive bugger goes on and this boy goes to work right away.  Today, it was much of the same as it's been on the last several outings - deep in the column, slow to little action on the fly.  The action wasn't hot and heavy and the pool was worked from the right to the left.  Then however, I shortened the distance and about six feet off a ledge was a remarkable little pocket.  A pocket where the trout were waiting. 

After ten trout were brought to hand the bugger is cut off and retired.  Prince Nymph hasn't seen any action on the last several trips so he goes into the stew. 

Funny thing about the Prince today - the fly had to be fished deep and a dead drift by itself wasn't producing.  After a long dead drift a little twitch was needed to get the fish to react.  Prince didn't do nary as well as the bugger, but, the two fish the fly took were significantly larger than the fish the bugger took. 

Never again will I complain about my feet being numb while fly-fishing and here's why.  It wasn't long after the second trout was taken by Prince that I heard voices behind me on Horseshoe Falls.  The voices had distinct Hispanic flavorings and as I turn to look I see a family of four with pant legs rolled up and barefooted, wading across the falls.  Barefooted!  This had to be the toughest family of all time!  Here I was in waders with neoprene booties and heavy duty wading shoes and I was already going numb. 

Leaving Ted's Pool I go to Scotty's to get a beer and run into James Russell.  James has been gone from Blue River for about two and a half years and it was good to see him.  He had his friends Jack and Bruce with him and they had been fly fishing around the crossing early. 

After they had lunch we met up downstream at Glory Hole to fish again.  However, the afternoon was terribly off as far as fishing.  After about an hour I bid goodbye to James and friends and headed to the prairie home. 

I left the river with a baker's dozen of trout to hand.