In a lot of ways, I wish the White River Open had been this past weekend instead of the week before. I might have won the amateur division if it had been this weekend. Or maybe everyone would have caught more fish.
Saturday morning, I was thrilled to have my wife with me as a fishing partner. It was her first time fly fishing and she had a good time. We had practiced casting ahead of time, but nothing beats the real experience of being on the river. I chose a stretch of the river where the wading was easy and the back-casting was fairly safe. At first, my wife really struggled with her casting. But, it just took some practice and things improved quickly. The next thing to work on is mending. She was trying to mend her line, but she got in the habit of always mending upstream, rather than reacting to the current. But, that's a minor point.
There was a nice hatch on Saturday morning - mostly caddis and March Browns. It was once again encouraging to see such a good hatch on the White, where hatches have been sporadic since Hurricane Irene. We saw one fish rise one time, and we never considered switching to dries.
I set my wife up with an 8', 4 wt. Winston Passport rod that I knew would be the easiest rod I have for her to cast. I gave her a double fly rig, but didn't even bother talking about the flies themselves, why I'd chosen them, tippets, knots, etc.
I put on a sinking leader because the fish had been fairly deep the week before. I was afraid my wife would struggle with the sinking leader, given the length of the sinking portion of the leader plus the tippet extension. My total leader length was 12' - too much for a newbie.
We worked upstream through a series of nice pools. Things were pretty slow at first. I had my wife fishing a green woolly bugger and a soft hackle PT. I was fishing a Psycho Prince nymph and a PT. A week ago, PTs had been the main fly, but things seemed different this morning. We eventually discovered that flashback hare's ears and zug bugs were the way to go. I also switched from the Psycho Prince to a Montana Prince and that fly drew some action. After an hour or so, my wife finally hooked into a fish - her first ever on a fly rod. It seemed to fight really hard and for a while, I thought she might have a big fish on. Eventually, we realized it was foul hooked and I waded downstream to net and release the fish. A few minutes later, I had a fish slam a PT nymph (we were still on our original flies but we changed soon after) and I got it to the net. It was a stocked rainbow.
As we headed upstream, we got into a really productive stretch of water, at least for me. I hooked and lost two fish at the tail end of a big pool. One of them appeared to be a wild fish, based on the fact that it was at least 12", and the stocked fish are all exactly 10.5", or so it seems. My wife was working ahead of me and not getting any strikes that she could detect. I was curious if this was due to her missing the strikes or if my sinking leader was making the difference. I also noticed that as the sun got higher in the sky, the takes became way more subtle. The first few fish I hooked slammed the fly, but things got progressively more subtle as the sun rose higher. Finally, my wife hooked into another fish, but it threw the hook. I had followed behind her, and I ended up hooking 10 and landing 7 rainbows. One of them that I got to the net was a wild fish, but the rest were stocked. So, I think I hooked two wild fish. Those 7 fish came in just 3 hours, and it took 15 fish to win the amateur division the week before. If I'd had all day to fish on Saturday, I might have gotten enough to 15 fish.
It was a blast fishing with my wife and she's excited to go out again. We do need to get her wading boots though. She used an over-size pair of running shoes and took one minor spill in shallow water. She was reluctant to buy them before this weekend, but she now seems to believe she will keep fishing and she doesn't want to take any more falls.
Sunday evening, I got out by myself for two hours. I fished right where we'd fished on Saturday. I was hoping after the nice hatches on Saturday morning that I might get into some dry fly fishing in the evening. Regretfully, insect life was almost absent. I saw one yellow sulphur (first of the year) and two BWOs (also first of the year), but that was about it.
I got to the water about 6:45 and the sun was still on the water, so I started with the same rig I'd finished with the day before. In the first 30 minutes of fishing, I had 4 solid strikes, but no hookups. As I moved upstream, things improved and I ended up landing 5 stocked rainbows on the hare's ear. I waded back downstream as sunset approached, hoping to entice the fish I'd missed earlier. But, I had no luck with that.
A little after sunset, I thought I saw one fish break the surface. I watched for a while and the fish came back again. Then, it jumped out of the water. I saw it hit the surface at least 5 times. I had no idea what fly to try, but I decided to give it a shot. And then, I remembered I had the sinking tip leader on. I needed to cut off two flies, remove a leader, put on a new leader, pick a fly, tie it on in the near-darkness and then cast to a single fish. I decided to skip it and headed home to have a late dinner.
Next weekend, I'm hoping to try the Winooski River for the first time this season. I'm also hoping that if water levels are lower than this weekend, I might finally be able to access a favorite spot on the White that's been unapproachable so far this year.
And, hopefully the wild fish will soon start to show up more frequently. Right now, the stocked fish seem to be in a hurry to get to the flies first.
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