Things are starting to settle down on a lot of the streams, although some are still running pretty high and fast. Decided to give Rainey Creek a shot. It is one of the smaller creeks around, and is managed for native and wild cutthroat. A weir quite a way downstream from where I prefer to fish keeps the other species out.

Upstream from my access point.



When the conditions are right, this little run will often produce a good number of fish. Got there a bit early today, and the water was still really cold. As soon as I stepped in, I knew I should have waited an hour or two to get started, but I was so looking forward to just getting out on this kind of water that I didn't have the patience.

Nothing in the first run, and no looks or hits for the first half hour or so. Then I came to a small hole, about the size of a bath tub, that looked really promising. It was.



This cutthroat is pretty typical of the fish in this creek. About 7-8", and really pretty. He ate a size 14 Yellow Humpy.

A while later, I came to this nice little run, actually, one of the bigger open pieces of water in the mile plus that I wet waded today.



I didn't land any fish from this run, but I did have a bunch of cutts looking at the fly and just missed hooking several. Saw somewhere around 8-10 fish here, mostly typical, and a few small ones, like 4-5".

(Continued )