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.