Next Time

One of my highlights this year was roaming and fishing a couple of streams that merged together in an open valley floor surrounded by mountains. Yeah, it was at high altitude with spectacular scenery.

The creek at the bottom of the trail was our first stop. Pretty little stream with pockets of pools holding rainbow trout in the ten to fourteen inch range. After landing a few, Steve and I stepped out of the water and headed to the river in the middle of the valley. The vastness of the space is almost overwhelming...and spectacular, indeed.

Steve was upstream of me and just a spec of a figure since he was a good distance away. He had been at that same spot for a long time, and my curiosity got the better of me. I hiked up to see what he had been working on for so long. When I got there, he was floating a dry fly over a pod of brown trout treading gin-clear water down low on the stream bed. I just sat down and watched, enjoying the beautiful surroundings...and, observing Steve working on fooling a trout to take the fake morsel.

I still had my fly rod that was rigged up for the little creek we had fished before heading out into the valley. It was my standard creek set-up with 7'6" 3wt fly rod, WF3F fly line, 7'6" 5x leader, and dry fly. Steve came over to me after a while and said for me to give it a go. I made my best efforts, but couldn't entice any of them to take a bite. I was wishing I had a longer leader with 7x tippet, but it was too late in the day for me to be interested in re-rigging for the situation.

We worked our way further up the stream for a while and then decided to head back to the creek and fish the "trouty pool" we found earlier in the day. We hooked up with trout there earlier in the morning and thought it would be a nice way to end the day of fishing. Yup, we were a long way off when we started trekking back to the base of the mountain, and that honey hole. After a long hike and seeing we had the right landmarks in sight, we noticed a truck pull over and park on the road above. Some guy is highjacking our honey hole. I thought it was particularly rude of the him, myself. He had to notice we were heading to that spot on the creek. Don't they teach common courtesy and manners at home or in school anymore? Nope, I don't believe so.

We then walked further down stream to throw a few last casts before hiking back up the mountain trail to the truck. Steve and I grumbled a bit while breaking down our gear on the tailgate, and then we turned our chatter to what a fabulous day we just experienced. We were rained out of fishing our planned stream for the day, and decided to explore a new (to us) area that included a creek and river converging in a valley. I've been wanting to fish it for about three years and it became the perfect time to explore the area. Wow, our rained out plans turned into a good day. Well, more than good. It was a fabulous adventure in a beautiful setting.

That night as I slid into bed, I began thinking how I had the wrong gear for the river on the valley floor. My gear was perfect for the creek, but not optimum for the river. however, I’ll know exactly what rod and tackle to pack for the next time I go there...