Winter Musings

Saturday, January 10, 2015

Winter Musings

It's been a somewhat strange winter season for me thus far. We had coho salmon lingering in our local rivers until late December with several caught by friends while swinging for steel. There has been enough rain to bring fresh fish in the rivers, but it seems things are running late. My friend Keith Tymchuck got a couple in December, but December was overall pretty slow and January has overall, yielded slow fishing thus far as well. There are exceptions, such as Craig Coover having a three fish day this past week and another story I heard of another friend finding multiple fish one day the week before. Just gotta be in the right place in the right time.

I've been going through my normal winter dry line swinging routine and my overall results are a few grabs that seemed like steelhead and a brief hookup in a tailout that was probably a small steelhead. None of my normal dry line runs have produced that electrifying chrome encounter that I need so badly.

Yesterday, I fished with good friends Adrian Cortes, Steve Turner, and Craig Coover on a favorite winter river. With the dry weather, we had a mild winter day with a river that had been on a slow drop for the past week or so.

In anticipation of the low flows, a good friend was gracious enough to gift me with a beautiful Orange Heron to swing with my dry line in the softer, shallower lies I would be experiencing. This fly looked so nice in the water that I could not imagine how it could go without getting grabbed. As expected, this fly fished beautifully in the gentle glides that the low water provided. I fished this beautiful fly with the utmost confidence over the course of the day and alas, no chrome attack was forthcoming.

In a favored locale, Craig breifly hooked a nice buck that got off after some headshakes and a jump and he had a couple more subtle pulls, most likely of the chome kind, as we continued to work down through the run.

At another spot Adrain got a good solid yank on his snow fly, but no hookup. Craig followed up and got a pull in the same area.

Steve spent most of the day taking photos and enjoying time on a river new to him while mixing in just a little bit of fishing in.

I had a great time with my good friends and I enjoyed the pleasant rhythm of swinging with the dry line in what I felt was optimum conditions for my chosen method.

Continued persistence is the name of the game for me as I continue through the winter season.