Blue River

Decided to mix things up a bit and head to the Blue River today. I used to fish the Blue quite a bit but haven't fished it in a few years. I knew it would be low and slow but I kept dwelling on the brick red bows we had caught there in the past.

Ben Lewis and I got on the water at the crack of 10:30 and I started flogging away with an indicator and split shot. An hour later without having a bump I decided that I needed to earn my fish today. Off with the indicator and split shot, on with the 8x and a weighted midge larva.

We were fishing the "cable riffle" (just made that up - it's the riffle above the spillway) and we were spotting fish pretty well. I was high sticking without my indicator touching the water anyway so all it really was doing was giving the fish a heads up.

The change in tactics produced some nice trout to include the blushed fatty shown above. These fish were not taking flies very hard. Any flash of white or any movement at all required a hook set. The problem with that were the bushes lining the bank directly behind us. This caused my hook sets to be short and, if it was a miss, a quick cast downstream to avoid the bushes. I thought I was pretty smart until this disaster manifested itself on the end of my rod. Seriously? A birds nest so nasty I had to take a picture of it.

The only thing the fish would consider touching today were TINY midge larva #24-28. A #24 Miracle Nymph and a #28 Blood Midge worked best for me. 6x seemed to be way too much. If you have the right rod and reel you can get away with 8x if you are very careful.

We got some really good sight fishing in today and learned a lot. I love that I still learn something new every time I hit the water. It never gets stale for me. After 20 years of fishing these rivers I still feel like a beginner.

Next up - The Taylor!