Trout!

 

Monday night I set the coffee pot to brew at 5:45 am, then packed a couple of rods into the truck, then  crawled into bed and drifted away............

My alarm chirped, I showered and walked downstairs to find the coffee pot had overflowed and run a dark puddle of coffee all over the counter top and right down the side of the cupboard. Oh well. Picked up buddy Jim Shulin (TFO fame) at the Crowne Plaza downtown about 7:45 and we happily drove against traffic south and outta town.

90 minutes later found ourselves standing over my "opening day favorite". She was still fully blown and unfishable. Good... That means the poacher with the steel shank book had not been in there early this year. Jim and I jumped back in the Jeep and kept heading south. By 10 am, we rolled up to Cold Spring Brook near Zumbro Falls where the water ran gin-clear, as always. We pulled on the waders, shook our fists at the cold wind, and wandered slowly upstream, nymphing several small browns and a few brookies out of a bunch of completely average-lookin' holes. Wow, the high water over the last couple of years has absolutely messed up that piece of water. I stepped in several sand pockets where I sank down over the knees. After two hours there we packed back up, picked up two five-pound bags of ice at the BP, proceeded to chill our beer and headed further south, to check out the whitewater system.

I don't normally fish around WW near opener, but time was tickin' and we needed to find some good water. The stream looked pretty clean so we hopped out, sucked down two ham and salted butter sandwhiches (partially soaked in cooler water), jumped the fence and made our way down to the stream.  I had easily two dozen fish swing-and-miss or half-heartedly whack my black wooley bugger fly. I've never had such strange luck on buggers. I literally brought a single, eight inch brookie to hand.

I walked upstream towards Jim and noticed a few small flies coming off the water. Of course, Jim was three pools and two steps ahead of me. He'd already tied on a small dry and was picking fish off in the wind. We decided the bugs were 16ish mayflies. I reached into my fanny pack and grabbed my dry box. Exactly one-small BWO left over from last season. Really? Had I just completely ignored my dry stash all winter? I found some size 18 gray dry fly (couldn't even tell you what it was), tied it on and proceeded to catch a fish on my second or third cast.  For the next three hours, we brought a countless number of average-sized browns to hand, all on dries.  At times, we had as many as five or six fish in a single pool rising at the same time. Jim looked at me and pondered wandering back up to the truck to grab his camera and take a few catalog shots. His response was right on...."Screw that." "I'm fishing..."