Crooked River February 8th

My fishing partner, Bob Coltrane, and I fished the Crooked River today, mostly in a steady rain. It was supposed to be the nicest day of the week, but apparently the NWS dartboard malfunctioned. Thankfully, it was 45 degrees and not particularly uncomfortable. Besides, the shop talk has been good fishing from Big Bend to Poison Butte and we were both pumped about the perfect, overcast conditions for a Blue Winged Olive hatch.

After a leisurely, short hour drive from home on the two-lane blacktop winding through the junipers, we were in the land of redbands and whitefish.

Figuring the trout feed mainly on whitefish eggs, scud, caddis larvae, other smallish bottom crawlers, and small mayfly emergers and adults this time of year, I went subsurface the whole time, nymphing a Winston BIIIx 9' 5 wt with a bead head green rockworm and an unweighted scud as a dropper. I hadn't nymphed the BIIIx before and was really impressed with how smooth, light, and easy it is, not to mention having the perfect action for light tippets with enough butt to handle decent fish in the current. Ended up landing 15 or so, about half bows to 16" and the rest 14-19" whitefish. Of course, I missed about that many grabs, lost one bigger bow on a run, and broke off another on the hookset when I forgot to check my tippet after a releasing a good fish. Sheesh, you'd think I'd have learned that lesson by now!

Bob fished an Echo Carbon 9' 4 weight, got a couple 'bows nymphing a Serendipity, and had nothing but nice things to say about the rod, a good evaluation since he's an excellent caster. However, if the truth be told, BC is a dry fly guy at heart, so he switched to BWO emergers and parachute adams, landing about 10 bows. The dry fly trout were mostly small up to about 10", but there were some bigger fish working here and there. On the way back to our rig, we chatted with 2 other fishermen who lost track of the fish they hooked on dries, but said that they "were embarrassed to call them trout at that size".

All-in- all, a very good day with excellent company and willing fish. Tight lines - Jeff