High Sierra Trout
Summer Wrap-Up
Well, it’s been a long while since my last post and I apologize for that. I’ve been very busy working for the Nevada Department of Wildlife and my camera got ruined at the beginning of the summer so I haven’t been taking any pictures of the trout that I’ve caught. Although I don’t have any photos to prove it, I have caught a ton of fish this summer; redbands in the Jarbidge River (no bull trout, though I tried), smallmouth bass in the Humboldt River, cutts and brookies from some alpine lakes in the Ruby Mountains, rainbows in the S.F. of the Humboldt River and E.F. of the Owyhee River and some nice browns and rainbows from Utah’s Green River. A couple of weeks ago Dan and I made the long journey to the Green from Elko to fish in the famed Flaming Gorge and it was well worth the trip. The Green is a beautiful river with a ridiculous concentration of fish, I’ve never seen anything like it. Although they were picky, we managed to land some nice ones on hoppers and zebra midges amid the beautiful scenery. The Green is by far the best river I’ve fished in terms of trout numbers and average size, it really is amazing. Part of my job this summer has been to obtain mercury samples from various Nevada waters, this entails fishing for and keeping five “catchable” sized fish to be sent to a lab for mercury tests. Last week I was sent on a solo overnight trip to a beautiful high mountain lake to get some brookies for mercury testing, sounds horrible doesn’t it? I had my phone along for an alarm clock and I took some pictures of the lake and the five brookies I kept (pictured below).
The fishing was ridiculously easy, those brookies were ravenous and would hammer a hopper fly as soon as it touched water. I also have some photos of some rainbows I caught from the S.F. Humboldt River outside of Elko before my camera melted down. This is a small river that flows through a rugged desert canyon that is populated by golden eagles and mountain lions, the mouth of the canyon is pictured at the top of the page. The Donner Party accepted some bad advice and took a “shortcut” through the canyon on their way to California, this poor decision contributed to their late arrival in the Sierras which led to... well, you know what that led to. The trout in the South Fork are large but not numerous, we electroshocked one of the few deep pools and didn’t net anything smaller than 16”. I fished it back in late June and even though there was a good flow, I only found fish in the deep pools.
Last Friday I hit up the South Fork again, this time the flow was way down but the water was a respectable 63º and the deep spots were still relatively deep. I got to the water at 6 am and soon after the trout started to rise. All I could see were midges, so I tied on a big dry with a size 20 zebra midge dropper on 6X tippet. On my first cast to a rising fish the dry went under and I set the hook on a very large trout. The fish erupted out of the water then took off downstream, snapping the 6X with ease. I only had one more zebra midge, so I contemplated using 5X for the dropper tippet, but decided the fish wouldn’t like the heavier tippet in the low, slow water. Instead I loosened up the drag on my reel, hoping that would do the trick. A little while later tricos began to hatch, but I didn’t have any flies to match them. The trout weren’t that interested anyway, there were tons of mayflies on the water but few fish rose to eat them, so I stuck with the midge. I ended up hooking four more fish on the dropper, landing two of them. I didn’t get a photo of the first one, but I used my phone to take a picture of the second (pictured below).
By about 10 I had gone a long time without a strike, so I did something I almost never do on rivers; I tied on a woolly bugger. I positioned myself in the ankle deep riffle above the pool and cast down to where the fish lay in the body of the pool. On my second cast I hooked into an acrobatic fish that took a long time to land (pictured below). A few casts later I was into another nice fish that I watched streak across the pool from 15 feet away to hammer the bugger (pictured below).
After that I went upstream to another deep pool and spotted two big fish cruising along the far bank. I rigged up with a hopper and the zebra midge and hooked the bigger fish on my second cast. The fish was at least 24” and full of fight, he ran and jumped all over the pool before burying himself in a mat of algae in front of me. I could see his tail sticking out of the algae, so I grabbed ahold of it and drug him out. As I began to lift him out of the water he struggled free of my grip, dove back into the algae, then tore across to the other side of the pool breaking me off in the process. That was my last zebra midge, so I had to rig up with some other tiny fly for a dropper. The second fish was still patrolling the far bank and he took the hopper on my next cast. As soon as he was hooked he streaked to the center of the pool and started shaking his head back and forth, it wasn’t long before he snapped my leader in half. By then the air temp had reached the mid 90s, so I headed back to Elko. I plan to return tomorrow morning, I’ll have to find something else to catch them on though, the one place to buy flies in Elko doesn’t have anything smaller than a size 16. One last picture; this is a pure strain Lahontan cutthroat that The Mule requested a picture of.
Saturday, August 23, 2008
