As 2011 comes to a close I managed to sneak off by myself for some alone time, which happened to involve swinging flies. Almost all the tailwaters were pushing max water except the Toccoa. I had fond memories of my last trip with the Gubna back in September. There was also the Upper Toccoa DH as an option.
I decided to head to the DH and keep the lower river in my back pocket in case the DH didn't work out. The morning got off the a rough start since I had to take the kids to daycare before heading to the river. I intended to leave at 7am, but didnt actually hit the road until 9. I got to the DH around 11am and to my dismay in was stacked up with people. I managed to find a decent hole and rigged up my new Redington 8w. I felt a little silly carry a rod with a fitting butt down to a 30ft wide river but I was planning on chucking streamers and my 4wt fishes more like a 3w. It was overcast, windy, and 44 degrees, which is a big difference than the forecast of 65 degrees and sunny. The flow was a little on the high side so after 45min of no action I added some weight. That immediatly made a difference.....a strong strike broke off my bottem fly, which was a stonefly nymph. As I was re-tying the dropper 2 guys dropped in below me, then 2 more guys dropped in above me....bummer. I went back to working over the same hole that I had just had the hit on. Finally after several more casts I hooked up with my first fish of the day. It was a 8-10in bow. My new fishing friends had boxed me in and they didnt look like they were headed anywhere. I was starting to dream of browns on the lower river. I should virtually have the tailwater to myself considering how crowded the upper river was. Finally after not having anymore takes and not seeing anyone else catching fish I decided to pack up. 30 minutes later I was pulling into the Curtis Switch parking lot and staring at 10-15 cars. Was everyone off work today? I should have driven down to Horseshoe Bend, but images of my last day of fishing Curtis Switch convinced me otherwise. I got into the river on worked my way around 2-3 people out from the take out. Unfortunatly there were 5 fisherman down river at the section I wanted to fish. I slowly fished bad water and actually missed a couple of fish on a green bugger. I kept looking downstream hoping to see the other fisherman moving down.....no dice, they weren't budging. I can handle a river being busy but I can't stand it when someone just sits on a hole and doesn't move. My time was running out so I moved on down to the riffles that start the good water. By this point I had a size 18 BWO and 20 red midge on. I caught 2 more 8-10in bows on the midge. I had to break off the fly on the last one or risk hurting the fish. That was my cue to head for the car. It was close to 3pm and I had to be back at daycare to pick the kids up at 5:30pm.
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