First of all, MY RANT: The parking lot by the dam was so full on Wednesday I couldn't even park. I've never seen it that full, must have been 20 cars. I refuse to fish combat style next to bung-holes from SF who only come up for the spawn and do nothing but run redds. Hey, we all want to put a 27" brown in the net, but some of these guys are over the top relentless on them. Sorry, had to get that out of the way.
Due to the aforementioned outbreak of Nazi Zombies, I was forced to fish water I rarely ever fish (for a reason), just above the meadows...Why? Because nobody else fishes it. Relatively speaking, not many fish lie there, especially at low flows, but when BWO's go on a frigg'n blitzkrieg rampage like they're doing now, you'd be surprised at what's holding in even the shallowest riffles.
7x and #20 barbless BWO's duns = lots of lost fish. Some busted me, some just came unbuttoned, but I'll be damned if it wasn't a blast. So much action, many in the net, but many more long-line releases. Check out this bow and compare it to the picture above. Its a Boca Reservoir bow, the fisheries biologist told me the strain last year, I don't recall the name but think they may be Eagle Lake fish. As you can see from the photo, they're much different than the resident bows of the LT. These guys generally only follow the Kokanee up to gorge on their orgy: they differ from resident LT bows in that they're predominately silver, their spots stop at the lateral line, they don't have white on the tips of their pectoral, pelvic or anal fins and...THEY JUMP. By contrast, resident LT bows are brownish red with an orange underbelly, their spots go to their belly, they have white tipped fins and they NEVER jump, rather, they give tons of head shakes and bull-dog you like a brown.
Poor browns, the water master F'ed their spawn, last week. Flows were cut day after day until they reached their "minimum" flow of 32cfs, so the browns left the runs which went from 18" deep to only 5" deep and are holding in the deeper holes, 3' deep and deeper. I just watched them pair up and fight each other, pretty cool stuff. Here is a brief resident LT bow battle
2 comments:
Fully agree with your rant. The ammount of pressure those browns see during fall is insane. Let alone throughout the summer. Its a bummer that one of our finest streams has become this way. I only fished it once this summer. Than took my girlfriend up to look for spawning salmon, and was blown away. atleast 10 cars in every single lot. But than i just smile knowing that us locals EARN our fish. We spend our days learning the secrets and exploring what we have. We would never disrespectfully force our way into a hole on the lt, just to relentlessly swing flys over browns sitting on redds. And thats what makes us real fisherman. We catch our big browns at noon in the middle of summer. Wed rather watch em spar than bump them in the face with streamers. And most importantly, we want to see our fisheries survive and flourish, a lot more than our want for a picture holding a 30" brown. Besides, we all know that the Big T is where you become a flyfisherMAN!
You said it!
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