The weather has been quite mild over the past week, and therefore I thought I'd get in the water and exercise some brown trout. I had a few hours on my hands so I geared up, drove to the stream and started fishing.
This time of year I find that I have more hook ups if I use a beadhead nymph rather than a traditional kebari -- at least that's been my observation on my waters. Because of this, I decided to go with an old standby, the beadhead Bloody Prince. I used a Shimano LLS36NX as I really like this rod for heavier flies and it fits the water I was fishing really well.
At first I hooked a few 8 inch browns, then I hooked a mountain whitefish. The prince nymph is the best whitefish fly out there and today it remained just as good. Mountain whitefish are members of the salmonidae family, they only tolerate pristine pollution free waters and are an indicator species for the health of a stream. Salmonids include salmon, trout, chars, freshwater whitefishes, and graylings. Whitefish don't fight like a trout, rather, they tend to dive and hold to the bottom. But they are generally large and heavy, and because they like fast water they can test your rod and terminal gear really well.
Working my way upstream I started getting into more browns. The size of these was pretty consistent. Most all came in at about 12 inches, with a couple at 13. I was able to sight fish to a few of them, as they were holding in the sandy edge of the stream in mere inches of water. A beadhead is not the best fly to use in sight fishing, as it tends to have a splashy entrance to the water and often scares the fish your targeting. But today it worked well. I hooked two of three browns that I was targeting sight fishing.
I fished for about 2 hours. I hooked and landed many and missed a few more. I was a wonderful time!
Here is a video of some of the fish and of the water I was working:
This time of year I find that I have more hook ups if I use a beadhead nymph rather than a traditional kebari -- at least that's been my observation on my waters. Because of this, I decided to go with an old standby, the beadhead Bloody Prince. I used a Shimano LLS36NX as I really like this rod for heavier flies and it fits the water I was fishing really well.
At first I hooked a few 8 inch browns, then I hooked a mountain whitefish. The prince nymph is the best whitefish fly out there and today it remained just as good. Mountain whitefish are members of the salmonidae family, they only tolerate pristine pollution free waters and are an indicator species for the health of a stream. Salmonids include salmon, trout, chars, freshwater whitefishes, and graylings. Whitefish don't fight like a trout, rather, they tend to dive and hold to the bottom. But they are generally large and heavy, and because they like fast water they can test your rod and terminal gear really well.
Working my way upstream I started getting into more browns. The size of these was pretty consistent. Most all came in at about 12 inches, with a couple at 13. I was able to sight fish to a few of them, as they were holding in the sandy edge of the stream in mere inches of water. A beadhead is not the best fly to use in sight fishing, as it tends to have a splashy entrance to the water and often scares the fish your targeting. But today it worked well. I hooked two of three browns that I was targeting sight fishing.
I fished for about 2 hours. I hooked and landed many and missed a few more. I was a wonderful time!
Here is a video of some of the fish and of the water I was working:
That's a beautiful whitefish!
ReplyDeleteI love when I catch a nice silvery pristine heavy fish. Some of the white fish in the Provo and Weber are a little beat up - missing scales and such.
White fish are the poor man's grayling. Just add a giant dinosaur dorsal fin and voila!
Do you eat them? If so do you prepare them the same way? I went fishing at Scofield this last summer and caught a ton of them.
Delete