well this weekend was our 4th spring fling at Jts and it was a good couple of days. We had a lot of tag sale vendors along with a couple of our suppliers there. The hardy / greys rods and TFO taking up a lot of the action. I got to try out a couple of the new hardy Two handed rods and i am looking forward to the Spey Clave on the Farmington May 5th so i can really stretch a few cast out. Just like on our steelhead trips our man Billy Dean did an awesome job of keeping everyone fed with egg sandwiches in the morning and burgers and chili dogs for lunch. Thanks as always Billy. There were times when we were slammed in the shop and Stan, JT, Carl, Lou and I all seemed to be going in 9 directions at once to keep our customers happy. Over all it was a great day.
Today I got out to the Willi to try out my new Hardy lightweight 4000DD reel all I can say is impressive. I met up with Lou and between us we figured out what the fish wanted. There were a lot of small size 16 caddis hatching and that was what they were locked on too. There were a few Hendrickson’s every so often but the fish were not interested in them. We both managed fish on top but after about 3 or 4 fish I lost my one and only tan elk hair caddis sz 16. I had changed around my vest and took out the bugger box and my stone fly box. I put in an ealry season dry fly box, it has hendrickson’s, red quills, paraleps and quill Gordon’s in it. I also put in my blue winged olive dry box. I pulled out my caddis dry box and had planned on putting it in the vest but it ended up at home on the closet shelf. The water is very low for April flow was around 72 CFS.
the fish seemed to be holding in the normal spots I had thought they might have moved to the deeper parts of the pool but they were in the tailout and flat as well. the tailout of the pool was only about knee deep, this time of year it should be to my neck. I ended up switching to a nymph rig after an hour or so of trying all kinds of other flys that kind of looked like the EHC. I did manage one more rainbow on a Czech nymph and I also go 2 lb sucker that both Lou and i thought was a good trout at first. All in all a great weekend. Looking forward to opening day next weekend.
Steve’O
