Campbell had been wanting to come for a fish with me for years. He grew up in the area and has fished all around his whole life. He had never floated the river so he took the plunge with me. He is a good, keen man who wanted to fish hard for the whole day. Turns out he has the same attitude as me in the approach to fly fishing; keep it simple and fish hard!
It was a slow start flicking a bugger around. I reckoned that was a precursor to a dry fly. If they look up and take a bugger fishing fast just under the surface, then they will also take dry flies. Nothing happened. Then we did a spot of nymphing and he picked up a couple of fish on a hare's ear flashback then a hare and copper.
There was nothing happening on the surface. The sun was out and the cicadas were making noise so I suggested we put on a big ole size 4 deer hair cicada with rubber legs. I thought we would just use it as an indicator above a bead head pheasant tail with rubber legs. This is a big, bold presentation.
In no time at all he was into fish. It was about 50/50 for the dry or dropper. Most of the action was from the canoe sight fishing and there were a bunch of random fish fishing blind. It was was mostly a brown trout day. After many fish we changed to a black deer hair cicada with rubber legs with the same nymph below. We got the same result. Then we put a Copper John nymph below and that worked too.
This man is a very good fly fisherman. He does have one fault; he can't count to three before striking!
What a day!
