I just got back from a week long family trip (with lots of really early and really late fishing) to one of my absolute favorite rivers. It's not a secret stream by any means but it's still my favorite 
It's the same drill as always, set my alarm for 4:30am and on the water before light at 5am. Fish until about 8am and then off with the family for the rest of the day. As my kid gets older, the mid-day nap fishing is being weened off as she's not napping much. So it's mostly mornings and nights. It still adds up to between 5 and 6 hours a day so I'm not complaining (other than the fact that I think I'll go back to work more tired then before I left).
I'm not sure how it was up in WA, but we went through another major heat wave and it didn't get below 105 all week. Thank god for wet wading in a Spring Creek
Bulls were the target and these were the flies.
But with my luck, I spent all this time tying and for the most part I literally needed ONE fly. 6 out of the 7 bulls I caught were on a @clarkman fly that he gave me from the Freebie thread (this was taken after the 6th, and yes, it's still damn fishy).
I landed one more on a brown D&D (Middle far right) and had another half dozen on the same D&D that came unbuttoned.
No hogs were harmed this week, all were taped between 22"-26" but to be honest, I find that to be the sweet zone for the bulls in this stream. Once you get over 30" they're pretty lethargic and just aren't interested. The mid 20" fish actually run and put up a fight. And god damn they're beautiful dinosaurs.
While I wasn't fishing, we did a lot of hiking (well, as much as a 4 year old could handle in 105* temps), swimming (did I mention it was hot?), and trying to get my kid into some more fish.
I want to be clear, I'm not forcing this on her. Every morning she would ask "Papa, can I bring my rod with us." So everyday that we were near water, we brought it.
In the end, she MOSTLY caught one fish. We hiked a short section between two waterfalls in the uppermost section of a a famous-ish river. In this mile section there is literally one single fishable run thats maybe 50 yards long (otherwise its incredibly angry whitewater. It's pretty brushy and not easy to get a fly in the water. So we got out onto a rock and I helped her roll cast it out there and when a 10" rainbow slowly rose and sipped the "Bert Special" (a black and purple Chubby), we all were so shocked. She was able to reel it in her self and the only disappointing part of it was she was mad at me that she couldn't eat it
. She was so excited she needed to get off the rock as she was going to fall in. I proceeded to pull 3 more fish out of the same run with her Echo Gecko. Here she is reeling it in.
It's the same drill as always, set my alarm for 4:30am and on the water before light at 5am. Fish until about 8am and then off with the family for the rest of the day. As my kid gets older, the mid-day nap fishing is being weened off as she's not napping much. So it's mostly mornings and nights. It still adds up to between 5 and 6 hours a day so I'm not complaining (other than the fact that I think I'll go back to work more tired then before I left).
I'm not sure how it was up in WA, but we went through another major heat wave and it didn't get below 105 all week. Thank god for wet wading in a Spring Creek
Bulls were the target and these were the flies.
But with my luck, I spent all this time tying and for the most part I literally needed ONE fly. 6 out of the 7 bulls I caught were on a @clarkman fly that he gave me from the Freebie thread (this was taken after the 6th, and yes, it's still damn fishy).
I landed one more on a brown D&D (Middle far right) and had another half dozen on the same D&D that came unbuttoned.
No hogs were harmed this week, all were taped between 22"-26" but to be honest, I find that to be the sweet zone for the bulls in this stream. Once you get over 30" they're pretty lethargic and just aren't interested. The mid 20" fish actually run and put up a fight. And god damn they're beautiful dinosaurs.
While I wasn't fishing, we did a lot of hiking (well, as much as a 4 year old could handle in 105* temps), swimming (did I mention it was hot?), and trying to get my kid into some more fish.
I want to be clear, I'm not forcing this on her
. Every morning she would ask "Papa, can I bring my rod with us." So everyday that we were near water, we brought it.In the end, she MOSTLY caught one fish. We hiked a short section between two waterfalls in the uppermost section of a a famous-ish river. In this mile section there is literally one single fishable run thats maybe 50 yards long (otherwise its incredibly angry whitewater. It's pretty brushy and not easy to get a fly in the water. So we got out onto a rock and I helped her roll cast it out there and when a 10" rainbow slowly rose and sipped the "Bert Special" (a black and purple Chubby), we all were so shocked. She was able to reel it in her self and the only disappointing part of it was she was mad at me that she couldn't eat it
. She was so excited she needed to get off the rock as she was going to fall in. I proceeded to pull 3 more fish out of the same run with her Echo Gecko. Here she is reeling it in.
