A great day's fishing on a cool mountain stream

Yesterday was my last day of leave and I celebrated it by spending the morning on a cold mountain stream. I rigged up a dry and dropper system with a CDC and Elk hair Caddis and a #18 Hot spot Pheasant tail variant nymph. I started fishing at about 7am and till about 9am all the fish took the nymph.

Pheasant tail variant

Shortly after 9am a fish took the dry followed by another smallish rainbow shortly after. I took off the nymph and tied on a dry fly spider pattern and from then on all the fish came up confidently to the dry fly.

The most memorable fish was the brown below that shot out from under a bush and launched himself a meter out of the water smashing my fly.He also gave me the best fight I have ever had for a brown trout.

I lost another good brown later in the morning but all the rest of the fish were Rainbows ranging from about 8 to 16 inches. Normally the fish in this particular stream would be in the fast water but today they were sitting in the slow flowing pools which made it a interesting exercise casting to them and not spooking them. There were six fish rising occasionally in the pool below and I managed to fool 4 of them into taking my dry. The other two I spooked with sloppy presentation. I also had to put lots of pressure on every fish when it took the dry to prevent him from screaming of upstream to spook the next fish.

Normally at this time of the year the water levels are pretty low and the water temperature heats up quite quickly, but at the moment the streams are just perfect, the fish are in great condition and its a absolute pleasure just being out on the rivers. I spend a great deal of the morning just sitting on a rock with my feet in the cool mountain water contemplating life.

If Douglas Adams was a fly fisher I am pretty sure he would have come up with a different answer than 42.

Well Monday its back to the daily grind. On a more hopefull note: The Lotto tonight is R15 mil, I have a ticket in my pocket and with the right amount of luck I would be able to spend lots more time sitting on a rock getting the correct answer to the meaning of life  for all of you.