The next day, I fished a bigger stem of the same stream. I parked the truck, hiked a mile downstream or so, and fished my way back. I was a little early though, as I got to the stream about 9 in the morning, and the fish weren't active. I went through a couple of pools that I knew had fish (because I missed three out of this pool the night before before I realized that my fly was broken off at the bend), and wasn't getting any interest. Usually, the fish don't turn on until about 10:00 in this area, so I forced myself to sit on a rock for an hour. I couldn't do that, of course, but I'd sit for about 20 minutes, get up and try a few drifts, get nothing, and sit for another 20 minutes. Almost exactly at 10:00, I started seeing a few golden stones coming out. So I grabbed one, pinched his wings a bit, and threw him out into a nice looking seam. He made it about 10 feet downstream, when a cutt turned around, raced downstream, and grabbed him. Go time!

I tied on a little FEB Hopper (props to JohnScott), and made a drift right through where I'd tossed the natural.



From that moment on, the fishing was ridiculous. I was picking up fish on nearly every cast. Almost every single pocket that looked like it should hold a fish did. In a mile of stream, I landed over 30 fish, and probably missed another 10 or 15 more.





There weren't any massive hatches like there were a couple of week prior, but the fish were definitely looking up even more than they were then. Every single fish was caught on a big dry fly, except one that I had to put on a big stonefly nymph to pull out of a deep pool.