We started out using the standard fare of green Caddis larva and pupa. Mike had a few hits but didn't have any luck hooking up. After covering a few runs without success I decided to change things up a bit. I tied on a small black Barr's Slump Buster and started dead drifting it. On about the second cast I had a hard hit and pulled in the nicest fish of the day. He seemed a little bigger than the standard 12-14" browns that we normally catch in this area. I'd say he was a good 15" (second fish from the right on the stringer).
I thought I was on to something with the dead drifted streamer but I was wrong. I took Kelly Galloup's advice and started running through the colors. I tried black then went tan. I tried purple and then went olive. NOTHING.... I was starting to really hate the dirty water.
The Caddis hatch never materialized. Later in the afternoon the water started to clear up so I was hoping that they would start hatching but no dice. I figured the dirty water was from rain the night before upstream. We did get some saving grace with a descent Blue Wing Olive hatch in the afternoon. I tied on a size 20 Mercury RS2 and within a few casts had hooked into a brown. This ended a stretch of about 2 hours without a hit. This guy took off downstream and I had to chase him down.
Mike hooked into a nice trout around this time and I waded out to provide a net. The trout was running downstream from Mike and then did a 180 and headed upstream. It was enough pressure to pull the hook out. I think this fish was a little nicer. Mike said it didn't really freak out when it was hooked like a lot of little fish do. It's always the big ones that get away.
Even though it was a tough day we did wind up with 5 nice fish that Mike took home and cooked up in the smoker. Not a bad day's work!
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