Tony and I have not been fishing together since before lock down. Last year everything was flooded so there was no point.
The first day we headed down the river armed with a big cicada. The river was up a bit from the recent rain and the regular rises were not happening. Trout were just not rising for the cicada, either. So we decided to try some nymphing and struck out with that too.
We wind had come up too but the sun was shining and I knew we had to persevere wit the cicada. I tied an elk hair caddis off the end of it just to add an option. We stalked a slow stretch and saw the rainbow. It was actively feeding and took the size 6 Deer Hair Olive with Rubber Legs. A couple of casts later, Tony got a brown on the Elk Hair Caddis.
We got some other fish just using the cicada after that but we only got ones we saw; it seemed like we did not have any random/blind takes. It was a bit weird.
So I spotted a good brown up a spring creek and gave Tony instructions where to put the massive size 4 deer hair cicada olive with rubber legs. He could not see it. His cast came up short and as I told him to recast, it came charging over. He put it back and it attacked three more times before Tony hooked up. He luckily did not break off on the many snags. After a couple of photos, he went back where he came from.
About five minutes later he got another, although not quite as big. It was a nice way to finish up what was a challenging day.
This morning we were at rabbit bridge at 0600. It was already windy and that was messing with my plans. I wanted to target risers on the flats with dry flies. The strong southerly would make that impractical. So we went subsurface. bead head krystal brown bugger, bead head bloodworm, olive marabou damsel and the bead head yellow and black bugger all caught fish. We caught them on the flats, on the edge of a spring creek, and in several of the smaller river channels. We were out by noon.
