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Fly Fishing is a Joke

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Good little shorty.

Wednesday, March 7th, 2012

Wednesday the 7th of March was another great day on the T. Fish were taking egg patterns as well as eating mayflies off the surface. There are a lot of nice fish in the system right now and they are angrily attacking anything resembling an egg. The fish are also aggressively feeding on the mayfly emergers, duns and female spinners. When the hatch is on, it is on. The fish key in to the mayflies and go crazy. Casting to specific rising fish seems to be the best ticket for the dry fly game. Throwing nymph rigs over the risers also produced many average sized rainbows. As the weather continues to warm up, the dry fly game should continue to improve, however, the water should start to come up here soon to feed the irrigation practices farther into the valley, therefore making wading and fishing more difficult. Once the T either slows down or gets to be too difficult to wade safely, I will start fishing the streams higher in the mountains and also the lake inlets around the Sonora area. 

Wednesday, February 29th, 2012

Wednesday the 29th was a very rainy day on the Lower Tuolumne. It started raining around 7:30am and did not stop. Luckily, the Tuolumne is a tailwater fishery and was not effected by the rain.

The fishing was great again today. I was the only person fishing the entire river which made it even better. I hooked and landed well over ten fish and lost two really nice looking fish.

The flows went from around 340 to around 320 around 8am. The flows can also be found at this link   http://waterdata.usgs.gov/ca/nwis/uv?11289650

I am excited to get back on the water next week and see if I can't land another nice fish like the one that broke me off.

All in all, Wednesday was a great day with plenty of action. I am bummed about the few nice ones that got off but I landed a lot of nice fish nevertheless. I only got a few pictures and the lens was wet so I am going to skip uploading photos until my next post.

Work horse flies

Here are a few flies that have really been getting it done lately. My favorite setup this winter has been a caddis pattern with an egg pattern as a dropper. I am not really picky about which caddis patterns I use because I have seen all different sizes (14-20) in the water, and they all seem to work. I tend to fish the larger (14-16) patterns, simply because they are easier to tie to my tippet in a hurry.

The egg bite has been slowing down compared to the fall when the Kings were in the water, but has still be a producer. I tend to catch more fish on the swing with my egg patterns. I have no idea why, but I do not mind, catching fish on the swing is always a thrill.

I have had success with the dry fly pictured as well. It is a simple biot body, parachute fly I tied up a few years ago. This patten has proven to be very durable, as I have caught and landed many fish with the fly pictured. Caddis patterns in size 16-20 are also bringing fish to the surface.

Now that the switch rod is out for a few weeks, I will not really be using streamers and swinging flies as much, but I pictured a few go to flies for when it gets replaced. The big red thing is an intruder pattern and the bullet weights coupled with 12.5 ' of T8 and I can get it down to any depth I need. Using bullet weights is a good way to weight a fly, while not limiting yourself to what you tie on the head. You can fish the same fly accross the surface on a floating line, then throw a 1/4 ounce bullet weight and fish it through a fast run. It is a trick I saw on Skagit Master II with Scott Howell.

The big Caddis flies I am yet to try. I planned on skating those in afternoon but snapped the switch rod so I never go around to it. I am excited to bring a big trout to the surface on one of those.

Anyways, I will be back on the water Wednesday. I will post a report and of course I will be posting some pictures of the specimens we bring to the net.

Have a good week - Tyler

February 22nd 2012

    The report for today February 22nd 2012 is great! We got into really nice fish all day long. I started out the day swinging flies while the other two people in my group worked nymphs. I eventually switched to nymphing techniques after I broke my brand new 5119-4 TCX. Bummer!! At least Sage rods have a lifetime warranty, especially since this was only my second day using this rod.
    So,  back to the report. The water was coming over La Grange dam at around 340 cfs which is nice for wading safely. The weather was great all day, not too hot not too cold. Fishing with egg patterns under an indicator seemed to be our best producer, followed by Copper Johns and caddis larva patterns.
    I landed the biggest fish of the day which was around 21" and heavy. The rest of the fish were all beautiful specimens around 15-18 inches.  Other than a busted switch rod, today was a great day. The dry fly fishing should continue to improve as the weather continues to warm up, providing anglers the opportunity to catch trout basically anyway they desire, either with nymphs, dries or streamers.
  I posted a few pictures from the day.

Some Intruders

I tied some intruders a few weeks ago. They are big and have TONS of movement when in the water. These flies take a long time to tie (~45min), so I hope they work. Many of you may know that these flies are designed for steelhead. I am currentlytying more smaller versions of this fly for larger trout. These things are really fun to cast on my  SAGE 5119-4 TCX Switch Rod lined up with a 375 Grain Skagit short and 12' of T8.