Dog Days of Summer

Down here in the Springs it hit 96 degrees today. Yesterday I got to spend a full day on the water. The morning consisted of guiding out of Mountain Angler alongside Pete Reynolds, bringing the joy of trout fishing to a family from Florida. That afternoon I met my brother at the mouth of Elevenmile Reservoir to kayak and cast to Carp and Pike. Again we didn't find pike, but carp were everywhere: the first cast to a carp ended in a tight line! Joining us were two bald eagles, one owl, a flock of pelicans, three turkey vultures, and a few sea gulls.

This 28.5'' 15 pound carp took me to my backing in under 25 seconds

A night previous, I arrived at Elevenmile around 8 pm and fished until 10 pm. I was lucky to run into another carp hungry angler, "Boston George." George and I shared the water and a couple cokes after it got to dark to see, he told me some interesting stories about the Dream Stream, and topics related. The veterans always have tricks and secrets and to them I am all ears.

Well, saturday the carp were active and I hooked 10 carp and landed 3 either on a white crazy charlie or a green tucker scud tied on an Umpqua Competition hook.  As the afternoon drew on we decided to head up near the dam and fish the dream stream, hoping the high flows wouldn't discolor the water up there quite as much. It was empty of course and we decided to fish streamers. 

We fished a well known drop off and I had a grab right away. when we got the fish to the net it was a sucker, with my black double bunny leach up to the articulation in his mouth! I had always been told if you catch a sucker, you must have snagged it, but this is the second sucker I have caught on a streamer, and both times the fly has been deep in the mouth of the fish. Go figure.

You know its summer time on the Dream, when you see caddis, mosquitos, and skies like this

As we were heading out, I was telling my brother of a monster brown I had hooked and lost in a side channel last fall, and since then I always scope the side channel for hiding fish. and sure enough as we walked past I saw a light colored fish around 20''. Immediately we dropped to our knees, but the fish spooked and started to head upstream. We then got up and started scanning the shallow channel for where he went. We couldn't find him and decided that he must have headed back to the deeper slot in which we found him. So quickly we took my brothers woolly bugger rig and added a caddis pupa dropper, and two cast later the fish made its presence known. 

battle-scarred 19 inch cuttbow hiding in a side channel

There was a pink San Juan worm still stuck in the corner of the fish's mouth, and as I pulled it out, a piece of tippet headed down into his stomach. As I pulled this out, the trout regurgitated a 5 inch long pink earth worm, a bunch of little black leaches and green scuds. Attractors on the menu. We called it a day at this point and headed back to the Springs.