Had an epic day out on the streams of high country Arizona. Chasing the Gila Trout. Plenty of people away from the stream walking but nobody fishing on the stretch I was on. I am not pretending to be any expert and my advise is just hopefully useful to some. No ego, just information to be used or thrown away.
The water was a little lower than last time but still has good color, also helping was a slight overcast cloud cover for most of the time.
I am like a broken record but what works works!!!. As we all know you have to find where the fish are feeding so playing around with depth is important till you get some action.
In this case most of the runs were about 4 to 5 feet deep. Under a small indicator 2 feet down black woolly bugger, I put a small split shot right on the head of the fly, most people do not, 2 feet down size 20 midge Black & silver. Cast up into the moving water slow drifts and game on!!
Plenty of good fighting trout only fished for 6 hours from 9-30 to 3-00 pm approx. I did land 2 fish that were at least 16″ plus and fat in the shoulders took me awhile to bring in on 6 x tippet. While taking the midge out of the first one he jumped out of my hand before i could take the selfie!!!. The next big one i put the net in the water to take my camera out and he just swam off the edge of the net giving me the finger!!! Well I had the memory!!!!
Also of interest caught a few very small wild rainbows beautiful markings, these guys were very aggressive taking the fly as soon as it hit the water and just starting to sink!! No big rainbows this day I think the Gila Trout have taken over!
The wild life in Az is so diverse, yesterday I had a very close encounter with a coral snake, literally next too me second most venomous snake in the world. Rare to see, the good news they have less than effective poison delivery system!!!! Good news.
As you all know I tend to fish 4 or 3# weight fly rods in these small waters so the experience is so much fun you can not over power these guys and even the smaller guys put up a great fight. I always take plenty of time to make sure they are revived.
Flyfishingwhynow 