Wednesday, December 28, 2016

Merry Fishiness

Merry Fishiness
2016

 I met up with Jeff on the upper part of Elk Creek early Sunday morning. The water had receded overnight from the snow melt and rain on Saturday but it was still running fast, a little high and chocolate. Knowing where to fish during these conditions is a great help and I knew where we might have a chance to hook up to some steelhead. We headed over to Lower Walnut in hopes that there wasn’t a crowd.
  The Manchester hole already had a dozen or so guys fishing it. Down below the bridge there were only a few stragglers trying there luck. In the parking lot there were more fishermen, not too many, gearing up. I dressed quickly and told Jeff where to meet me. I strung up the 9’ fly rod and headed down to the water.
 I found the water was kind of murky also but looked not as chocolate as Elk. It was the color of watered down coffee with cream. I crossed the creek and headed up to a section I thought I would get a good drift through. With the water color I decided a bright color sucker spawn would attract attention, and though might not convince a strike, might get a fish over to see a more convincing dropper spawn to their liking.
 Jeff wasn’t too far behind and stayed on the roadside of the creek. I had told him earlier where I hooked up the day before and he found a good starting point and was getting some good drifts. Jeff hooked up first and played the steelhead through the wavy, fast current to the bank. 

  A couple of buds showed up and we all proceeded to find hungry fish in the stained water. We would hook up now and then but were only able to land just a few. 

  Since we were closer to the lake I figured there were quite a few fresh fish coming in and were friskier than the holdovers up creek. When one was hook it would give us a squirrelly forceful fight in the narrow stream. One of the steelhead I brought in the hook was just pierced through the skin near its lip. One more forceful escape or skyward jump and I’m sure he would have got off.
 Overall it turned out we hooked up enough to keep our attention and mood on the plus side. More people showed up later in the morning. A few started to crowd in, within rod length, but that’s something to expect at the access area so there wasn’t any reason to get too frustrated, besides it was Christmas.
 In the afternoon Jeff and I went and fished upper Elk. The water had cleared up some but was still stained. It was also high and fast but still fishable. I hooked up only twice in the few hours we roamed the stream. Caught and kept one for Jeff to throw in the smoker.
 Here’s a few Christmas steelhead I had the pleasure of meeting briefly during our time on the water.

 ~doubletaper






2 comments:

  1. Thanks for the nice blog. It was very useful for me. Keep sharing such ideas in the future as well, and I am glad to came here! Thanks for sharing the such information with us

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  2. You're welcome. I always try to to share some ideas with each post. Not sure if the fish agree with them but it gives me confidence.

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