Guess Who Finally Got Around to Catching Their First Fish of 2017?

Took us long enough, right?! We decided a forecast of 65 degrees with partly cloudy skies in February was a good enough excuse to call Bree in sick from school (teach em young!), and head up to Elevenmile Canyon to catch our first fish of 2017. We would have made this fish catching thing happen sooner, but every time we all had a day off together to harass some trout it would snow or be sooooo windy that our youngest, Abby, would need to be tied to a fence post to keep her from flying away. Yesterday was not only our first 2017 opportunity, but also Bree's first trout on her new fly rod that she asked mama and papa bear for on her bday. Without further ado here are some photos we took from our trip, followed by a quick report!


 


We figured this was a good excuse to give you guys a "Fishing Reports Are Like Buttholes" report for the Canyon.

The flow was hovering around the low 80 c.f.s. mark and was crystal clear and cold, which is usually what it's like in early Feb. We fished towards the dam in a spot referred to as the Money Pit. For the most part the trout were anchored to the bottom and only rising on a rare occasion. Kristen and I saw maybe 5 midges hovering above the water all day, and under those conditions fishing can be very slow without a hatch to motivate the fish. Despite all of that it took our oldest daughter, Bree, roughly ten minutes to land her first of the year on a size 22 red Bloodmidge. I then landed 2 in a row - one rainbow on a size 22 bwo Barr's Emerger, and the other a brown on a size 22 olive Mid-Drift Midge. And then Kristen worked her tail off to get her rainbow which also fell victim to an olive Mid-Drift Midge.

We used 6x fluorocarbon tippet, a number 4 split shot, and the smallest white indicators we had to avoid spooking fish. And almost every strike we got was extremely subtle. It's safe to say that between the 3 of us we probably lost more fish than we landed. Chalk it up to being rusty! In fact, I'm fairly confident that if I was relying on my strike indicator to tell me when to set vs. sight fishing and setting when I see signs of feeding, I would have left the day on a skunk. That's how picky those educated salmos were being! Moral to the story - if you find yourself in a similar situation set on any sign of feeding to give yourself a chance.  


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