Andrea met me at the subway station and we went to the apartment to grab my car...and we were hoping to beat rush hour traffic.
Nope...still got stuck in some heavy traffic. It took us 1.5 hours to get to our spot.
I lend Andrea my 5/6-wt while I used a shorter 3/4-wt. As always, I started with an elk hair caddis.
Water was much higher and faster than I had ever seen. All the usual little spots that held fish were much harder to fish.
I missed a few hits, then Andrea gave me a shout and he was hooked up with his first ever brook trout!
He said no picture needed.After Andrea landed a second smaller brook trout, I finally struck one of my own. First brook trout of the season always gets its mug shot taken.
We moved a little downstream and Andrea took another one.
It was too beautiful not to take a picture.
After getting the rust out of my system, I finally got back into shape. I saw a few light hendricksons and put on the appropriate fly and started landing a few more brookies.
Andrea had two defective caddis flies (both rusted hooks??? I think they were flies I may have used on my Asia trip...). I gave him a blue winged olive since this time of year there is usually a hatch of them.
We went down to fish near a dam. Andrea was working the water quickly. I like to really work spots well, especially in difficult fishing conditions. Sometimes it takes a few drifts to get drifting properly. By working more slowly, I took some fish that Andrea missed.
Andrea was not getting too many hits on the BWO...so I gave him my last light hendrickson. After that, he took a couple of brookies.
We moved further downstream to fish the end of a fast riffle. On the far end near a nice seam, I took 3 fish in a roll. I waved Andrea over and he quickly took two more from the same area. We even got one hookup on camera!
As it was getting toward 8pm, we moved back upstream to the pool where we started. I was anticipating a good BWO hatch but that didn't materialize. In fact, I didn't even see one BWO which is rather strange.
We did see some sparse light hendrickson hatching. Even though it was a sparse hatch, the fish were keyed on them. Andrea took a couple of fish including this nice 10" brookie.
I took 4 smaller brookies before missing a rise that ended up with a mighty tangle. There was no way to untangle it in the fading light so I just clipped off my tippet and called it a night. Andrea fished about 5 minutes longer but it seems the fish had enough of us already.
It was a nice 3 hours after work session. I lost count after 10 brookies and Andrea had close to that number as well. It was great to add another species on Andrea's list
Beautiful fish.
