Saturday evening I received a text from one of my partners, Lori, saying that she wanted to fish for a few hours on Sunday morning while our other partner (and Lori’s husband), John was working another guide trip. John was in the middle of a seven day stretch on the river and I happened to be off. My wife, Mary, was busy getting ready to go on a short trip with her friends so I told Lori I would love to fish. Lori guides with John and I at Blue Ribbon Guides and is a very accomplished fly fisherperson.
Lori
said she wanted to fish the Narrows which both of us have done numerous times
in the past. This time Lori wanted to try some different spots at
that location since the White River was generating minimum flow. I
picked up Lori at her house in Cotter at 8:30 and we were off to the
river.
Upon
arriving at the parking lot I was quite surprised by the lack of cars in the
lot. Usually with low water the parking lot is packed. Sunday was
supposed to be a nice cool sunny day so the lack of fishermen was a little odd.
We
geared up and headed for the river. Lori and I surveyed the water
and decided that we would start near the tail end of the island. I
started fishing some riffles with a nymph and dropper rig but did not do
well. During previous trips to the island I knew that I had caught a
lot of fish way up at the head of the island so I decided to make the
hike. I passed four other fly fishermen and three boats anchored in
the calm water. I arrived at the head of the island and stood for
several minutes observing the water. I noticed that there was a very
sporadic caddis hatch and the fish were taking them on the surface. I
re-rigged my rod with a caddis dry and a small dropper. I waded out
to the weed line and started casting to rising fish. The first cast
connected with a feisty little rainbow. This action continued until
I had landed ten rainbows. Then, all of a sudden, the fish turned
off.
I
decided to work my way back down river and, along the way, site cast to still
rising fish but nothing would take. I finally hit a nice long run
after some riffles and switched back to a nymph dropper rig. I
started catching fish immediately. While fighting a nice rainbow I
looked down river and noticed that Lori also had a fish on. I worked
down through this drift and the action started to fall off. I
decided that I would make one more cast with these flies and then change. I
made a rather long cast to some boulders that I could see just under the
surface and had the thought that just about every other fly fisherman would
have -- that there has to be a fish
behind those rocks laying in the current break. My flies landed
where I wanted them and drifted about 15 feet when all of a sudden the water
exploded with a really nice brown trout. I knew I had the fish
hooked well but still thought about the 6X tippet and barbless hook. I
fought the fish for several minutes and managed to bring the fish close to the
shore. My landing net was sitting high and dry in the back of the
car.
I
got the fish up on a nice wet grass area, took a couple of pictures and
released him back to the river unharmed. After lining the fish
up with the markings on my rod he measured about 20 1/2". I sat
there on my knees watching him swim off and thanked him for the fight.
Lori
had moved up river to my location and we briefly compared notes. She
had caught about 15 fish including one brown trout. We decided
to fish for another 15 minutes, and then call it a day. As we walked
from the river back to the car we both figured that we had each caught in
excess of 15 fish each.
In
checking with John to see how he and his clients did, he said they managed to
catch a lot of fish but he was dead tired from the consecutive days on the
river.
Lori
and I decided that our fishing day should be considered "research"
and not just a great fun day of fishing!
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