LOW WATER RETURNS BY JOHN BERRY

If you have checked the river levels for the last few days you have probably noticed that they are much lower. I figure that they are not running much water right now because of flooding downstream. This is a temporary respite from heavy generation. One of the big advantages of living here is that we can take advantage of great conditions.

Last Friday was such a day. The forecast was for a cool morning and a hot afternoon. The sky was sunny, the winds were to be light and variable and there was to be low generation (about 2,500 cubic feet per second or 2/3 of a full generator).

This is a great level to fish, from the boat, at Rim Shoals. The fish are still concentrated in the main channels and you do not have to use heavy weight, long leaders or big strike indicators.

I asked my wife, Lori, if she would join me, for a morning on the river. She quickly agreed. She had been very busy with our new puppy, Ghillie, and had not fished on her own (not guiding) much recently. We arrived at Rim Shoals at 9:30AMand took a couple of my client rods and quickly changed them for the water conditions. We stripped off the heavy AAA split shot and put on a lighter BB shot. We adjusted the strike indicator for shallower water. Lori kept the Y2K and hare and copper fly on her rod. I kept the Pheasant tail nymph and tied on a ruby midge dropper.

We began catching trout immediately. It was evident; from the start that the ruby was out fishing all, of the other flies, three or four, to one. We stopped fishing, for a while, so that Lori could rerig her rod to swap out the hare and copper dropper for a ruby midge dropper. This is standard procedure for us. We always begin fishing together with different rigs, so that we can quickly determine what is working. It only took us two drifts to key in, on the ruby midge.

We had been doing OK but now we were on fire. We were catching trout after trout. I didn’t keep up with the number of trout caught but did note that we had seven doubles in our two hours of fishing. About 11:30AM Lori decided to return home, to check on the puppy. She had caught plenty of trout. I stayed and fished, on my own, for another hour and probably picked up another dozen trout. It had been one, of my best days ever, on the river. To be able to share it with Lori made it special.

We had caught some perfect conditions and moved to take advantage. When you get an opportunity like, this take it!