Salt Castings

Cold steel September 12, 2011

I got up early to swing some flies on the Sky yesterday but no luck finding a fish. Noah and I found a long sweeper last year that looked like pretty ideal holding water so I thought I’d give it a try. I wanted to beat any crowds so I got there well before daylight and used a headlamp to beat through the blackberries.  Eventually I made my way  to the top of the hole and ended up standing around for a few minutes before I could see the end of my rod. I threw the same black General Practitioner I used on the Hoh — which, coincidentally, is the same fly I caught a small wild steelhead two years ago on the Sky — using a 10′ sink tip on the end of my floating line. That setup worked good at the head and tailout, but I didn’t like it in the slower part of the run, so I ended up monkeying around a bit in places trying to figure out the best method for keeping the fly in play. I brought my spool with the intermediate shooting head and tried a stimulator/dropper setup with a stonefly at one point, then went back to the floater with a regular 9′ leader and dredged the hole again with an egg-sucking bunny leech. It really should have been a dynamite morning as there was a heavy fog that kept the sun off the water until almost 9. Guess that’s why they call it fishing and not catching.