Saturday, May 28, 2011

Don't leave me Hi; don't leave me Dry

I was able to make a quick trip to the HI after work on Friday.  I knew they were running one generator every couple of hours, so wading would be perfect.  My goal was to catch the sulfur hatch in the evening.  This was a last-minute trip, so I wasn't very prepared and didn't have a lot of time.  I started at a spot where I usually finish: on the road side of snake island.  On the way towards Snake Island, I saw fish feeding on the surface.  I had an old Cherokee Leader on my 5 weight, so I grabbed the biggest dry fly in my box, and started chuckin.  The fish were hitting it with abandon.  I tried a dropper when the fish stopped feeding, but after snagging a fish, I ditched the dropper, and tied on another gigantic dry fly, the name of which I do not know.  I caught about a dozen in the first hour, and then made my way over to the run above snake island.  I tied on a wet Ted's Stone Fly, and caught one, but the fishing went cold.  I worked my way up river, and then the water came up.  I waded up to a large pool and tied on the largest streamer I could find.  I fished for about an hour using a couple of different streamers, but except for missing a few fish, I didn't catch anything else. The water came down after an hour and I worked my way back downstream hoping for the evening sulphur hatch.  Much to my disappointment, I saw only a couple of sulphurs.  There were, however, quite a few bwos and what appeared to be cahills.  I tried both flies, but didn't have any luck.  I also tried sulphurs without success. A pheasant tail nymph caught a couple of more fish for me, but it was otherwise slow.  The real hatch was extremely small midges; probably size 30-32.  Interestingly, the fish really weren't feeding after 6 p.m..  I ended the day with about 15 to hand, but all of the fish were SNITs except one that was close to 12 inches, and all rainbows.  I must admit, it was a little disappointing except for the first hour where they were hitting the dry flies.  I'm still waiting for the time when the HI will once again produce more quality fish.