A little over a week ago we had beautiful weather; it was a Friday, so I decided to go to Roaring River State Park to catch my January trout. I headed to the short stretch where you are allowed to wade and had most of it to myself. Worked down the stream, back up and down again. Only two fish on and neither brought to hand. I took off my waders and headed up near the spring to fish a hole where I always catch fish. You guessed it: I can no longer say always for that hole. I had two follows, but no takes. Thus ended my first trip of 2015...nothing!
Today was a miserable day. It was windy, cold, windy, damp, did I say windy? I got to the tailwaters and the flags on the dam were standing straight out. I figured this might be my only chance left to catch a January trout and the wind would help me practice my casting for my trip to Belize next month. It was one of those days where you time your cast to what might be a slight decline in the wind speed. At least in Belize the guide will be able to position the boat so the wind works with you instead of against you.
I tied on a purple soft hackle with a gold rib and dark brown hackle and walked towards the stairs by outlet number three. The steps had yellow tape on them, "caution don't use". I don't know how long they have been closed as I hadn't been to this area to fish since at least October. So I found what appeared to be a trail to the water and headed for the stream. It was such a nasty day that when I arrived there were only about 6 or 7 other fishermen downstream from outlet number two. Unfortunately, two of them were in my favorite spot. So I walked downstream of the big tree stump where I couldn't see anyone down stream from me to try my luck.
On my third or forth cast I had a beautiful 15 inch rainbow. Very pretty colors, but not much girth. In the next hour I caught several more, but they were all the silver, almost no color fish. All of these were probably 10-12 inches in length. Most of the takes were very soft. Just as I decided it was getting awfully cold and that I should quit, I had a good hard take. The result was another very pretty fish, this one was just about 17 inches and had a little more girth to him. Looked a little "healthier" than the first one. Definitely better than all of the slender silver ones.
My old bones were getting cold, so after just a little more than an hour I went back to the truck to warm up. While I was sitting in the truck, a lot of the other fishermen started coming out of the water too. I decided I would just call it quits for the day. So I cut off the same fly I started with, it would have been a good day for a "one fly" contest, and got out of my waders just as the rain started in earnest. The weather was bad but the fishing was very good. Anytime I catch fish, I consider it a good day. Did I mention it was really windy?
