November 3, 2019 – Not the Day We Expected, But Not for Lack of Effort – SEPA Tributary

The Silver Fox in action on a very challenging day.

One of us is bad luck.  Last Sunday, Tom H. and I nearly floated away on Valley during a flash flood, and this morning we drove to a usually productive blue line and ended up with just over half a dozen uber-dinks.  When we last fished this tiny creek together in late May of this year, we had a blast on wild browns and native brookies up to 11 inches.  Today, as the collage below shows, only the babes felt the need to eat.  The flow was up a bit, but not in a bad way, but there were no bugs present until later in the afternoon.  Even then, I had one tan caddis land on my shirt sleeve and saw a couple size 20 olives.  I think the combination of high pressure and two nights of frost had the most to do with our lack of success, however.  The water got much colder pretty quickly.  We saw no redds in the area we fished, but that does not mean that many of the adults have moved to spawning areas.  Theories abound when one is not catching fish.  We gave it a good 5 hours, hoping a warm up might spark some action or some bugs, but despite out best efforts, the fish kept their distance.  We even tried to move something with small buggers, but saw very few fish that we did not catch.  One of us is bad luck, but both of us fished on a crisp, fall weekend morning, so it was not all bad.

Tough day when I have to photograph parr!