The old saying “big lure, big fish” seems to be 180 out here. Yesterday and today, I caught some big rainbows, only on the smallest flies I have, I think size 26, no bigger than 24. Ridiculous! You need to bend over, look at the water, and see what tiny bug is hatching. These tiny creatures live in and on the bottom. At different times of the day and year, certain ones come up from the bottom, escape their husks, mate, and die. Some fly around for a while, then lay their eggs on the water, and the cycle starts over. That’s it, trout food. It’s called “matching the hatch”. You have to do it. When you get it right, it feels good. These super tiny bugs are called midges. This morning, the first ones I noticed were a little brown. I caught a rainbow two or three inches bigger than yesterday’s big fish. The action faded. I looked down at my waders just above my boots. There were hundreds of black midges.
So I tied on a blackish midge and had quite a bit of action. Caught a couple of big colorful rainbows and had a very big fish on for a while. This is what you see sometimes after a fish gets off.
If you zoom in on the point of the hook, you’ll see a little scale which came from the edge of the trouts mouth. Should have trimmed my knot a little closer.
I’ve been fishing just downstream of this dam. Zoom in on the diagonal line moving down from left to right. A car is about halfway across. It’s a big dam.