Almost Ready

I took a ride around Rainy Mountain this week to see how close we are to good fly fishing. We're close, but not quite there yet. I did see some trout and oh man, they are paranoid as ever. As soon as I was spotted, they would shoot into the under cut of the rocky banks. This is the spookiest I've seen them in this part of the mountain. It won't be long now for some good dry fly fishing, though.

A new experience for me! While hiking down a trail, I came across something I've never seen before. There was a pile of big bird carcasses without any heads. They were there for a while it looked. What in the world would cause this? A poacher? A predator? Yeah, I didn't hang around there for long and went further up the mountain to check out water flows at higher altitudes. Weird!!!

About half way up the mountain there are still snow along the banks, but that seems to be melting fast. Can't be much melt going on because the water flows are actually about perfect. We just need a little warmer temperatures to kick start some hatches and conditions will then be ripe for fly fishing.

Did I fly fish? Sure, but didn't fool any trout to rise to my fly. I rigged up a vintage Winston IM6 7'6" 3wt rod and had some fun drifting a dry fly. A sweet little rod for this area. Yup, even though there were no trout to the net, it was a good day to knock off the rust with my casting and practicing my landing a fly softly on the water's surface.