What would you use? Describe the set up.
Explain your rational on how you plan on hitting the hole.
Browns and brookies and maybe a wayward TIGER present.
Wisconsin in the middle of May. No obvious hatches.
This was his first cast in the hole.
The angler caught four trout in this hole.
Right side of hole is shallow and silted in.
The current shows you where the holes would be.
Spinner1,
Assuming they are legal there, I would use a three fly, wet fly cast. A Stewart’s (Baillies) black spider as the point fly, a red spider mid and a dun spider on the bob. Casting quartering upstream to let the point and mid flies to sink a bit, allow the flies to dead drift through the entire hole.
Should the spiders fail to produce I would throw caution to the wind and use a Dupont lure.
REE
From the other side, and some sort of hopper dropper to start. If not really small nymphs, and always finish a hole with a streamer or 2.
Edit; it being may go right to nymphs, mayfly nymph and a caddis.
Obviously the gent with the rod appears to be bottom bouncing some nymphs. I say that due to the angle of the flyline entering the water. Depending on the weather (temp appears cool, flannel shirt, sweatshirt) I would probably opt for the same. Appears to be late morning, I would go with an Olive BH Bugger with a trailer unweighted nymph 18" back (HE, PT, or muskrat).
Even though there is no surface activity I would also cast at least a couple wets from the vantage point of the 2nd gent, cast them slightly up and let them dead drift across where the riffle meets the lip of the hole proper.(May) I’d probably use a couple soft hackles (March Brown emerger, and a HE).
I’m not a rookie, just a sophomore!
Depending on the time of day -
Until maybe 11 am I would try a two nymph rig with a pink squirrel and some sort of pheasant tail pattern, with the PT below the pink squirrel. Fish it up and across under an indicator.
After that time, even if I wasn’t seeing many (or any) I’d try an elk hair or henryville caddis pattern fished downstream and twitched once in a while. I’ve had good luck bringing fish up to that a for a week or so after the caddis hatches are beginning to peter out.
four trout were caught in black circles.
First was caught right after the photo was taken.
Each trout after that were caught just upstream from the next.
I would try a large Adams with a wet PT about 24 inches below it and cast it upstream from where the gent is fishing, around the corner, to tumble down through the shallower riffle, moving out farther with several casts to try to drift the combo around the far side of the hole.
I would fish from the tail end of the pool using a caddis emerger.
The guy on the bank to his right is standing a bit too close and to tall. Plus his choice of clothing is too much of a contrast with the background.
Fix: Tell him to either stand further back in a crouching position or if he truly wants to get that close…get on yer stomach.
From the look of the picture, it’s early season (clothes are heavy, the trees still look denuded).
I’d seine the water, lift some rocks, check the bugs, look under leaves, check my Latin dictionary, recheck my Latin dictionary…
…and then say to hell with it and throw a Pink Squirrel on there with a BB split shot or two.
I’d probably get out of the water as well.
I like the way you think.
'round here I would just walk right past it. Wouldn’t be any fish in water like that. Stuff like that would be called a slough and likely have nothing but sculpin in it if that.
Where there are sculpin, there are things that eat sculpin…
:D:D
Well, I don’t know about hoity-toity Washington State trout, but Wisconsin trout live for an outside bend with a riffle dumping into it.
So spinner1 - how’d we do?
We don’t have many trout in western WA, hoity-toity or otherwise and I was mostly joking about the sculpin. The reason we have no trout is our rivers have no trout food. Most of the rivers in western Washington are too acidic to support much insect life and as such not many resident fish compared to other regions. This also could be the reason most of the fish in our rivers are anadroumous and these fish likely are not going to hang out in places that look like the place pictured.
I am a bugger nymph person so that is what I had the guy use.
First he bounced a size 10 bead headed bugger through the tail left and hooked up right away.
I had him get the trout out right away. I knew that upstream held more trout. (Have fished this hole numerous times).
He casted just about 15 feet above his prior cast and bounced that bugger through again and bang. About a 17ish inch brown (big trout) of hole. The trout ran upstream a little and kicked a couple others upstream.
We waited for a while for the hole to calm down. We put on a size 12 bead headed pink squirrel and added about 10 feet to the cast.
10 casts later he had landed 2 more trout. The total was 4 for the hole.
The guy caught ALL 4 trout without moving from his inital postion.
The deepest part of the hole and the most shaded part of the hole was the second dot up left to right. There was a step drop there and the biggest trout of the hole was hanging in that area in the shadows in the deepest part of the hole.
Have caught bigger trout at head of hole but the light conditions caused the trout to fall back in to the shadows.
When in doubt in early season, throw on a pink squirrel.
I’d tie on the first at caught my eye at the car than tromp down to the shore. While trying to sneak up for a look I’d trip and fall in, splashing and creating all kinds of noise. Drain my waders while ‘letting the water rest’. Try again, same result. Drain water again, forget about ‘scoping out the water’ and throw out my line. Hit the far side and allow it to fall in the water. Bad mend jerking the fly out of the water and creating a big splash. Try again easier on the mend, now have too much drag on the fly causing a QE2 size wake.
They must not be going after what I’m fishing. Damn, the tippet on my line is too short and I left my supply in the car, too far to go back for it so I’ll just use a bigger fly. Tie a hopper on the end of my 4’ long tippet and give it another go. Stand up and slip on something… back in for a swim. Don’t even drain my waders this time, considering cutting a hole in the bottoms to allow the water to drain.
Again bad cast, bad mend, bad drift. There must be no fish in this spot and move down to the next swimming hole, I mean fishing spot, by wading down with all the grace of a belly-flop contestant in a mud hole.
Repeat the above. Still haven’t caught any fish and rationalize the results by saying:
That?s why the call it fishing not catching.
Anyway a bad day on the water is better than a good almost anywhere else. Right?
To start with, I would want to be standing over by the observer’s position and keeping myself as low as possible. Even brim spook with that high degree of visibility. Just my 2% of a dollar. I’m sure others will disagree. 8T 