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View Full Version : Report: 2 Hours on 99 (American and Merced)



Wednesday Caster
10-01-2005, 05:37 PM
REPORT- Part 1: American River
As per my scheduled itinerary, I got my waders wet at 7 am on the American. I walked about 1/2 mile of the Sunrise parking lot on the north side of the river and found a section that had a nice gravel bar that reached out more than half way across the river. I entered gently into the eddy created by this bar and casted around 20 times covering most of the back eddy all the way out to the flow in the middle of the river but found no fins intererested in the pheasant tail and green butt skunk I tied (a new venture into this sport). I know this sounds like a very odd combo but my fishing this day was to try out only flies I tied which were limited to PT, GBS and hares ear.
As learned from my normal small creek fishing, I had expected a fish or two may be at the end of the fast water created by the bottle necking of the gravel bar and I switched the GBS to my only alternative the hares ear and casted upstream letting drift. I must have casted another 20-30 casts, switched back to the GBS and a different PT and casted another 30 times and then swithched back to another hare's ear type of fly tied with of all things scrap of material of flash and bunched up fuzzy goodies I had scatterd around my table top. Well those scraps resulted in the only "bump" I had for the day. I was so surprised when it came that I did not even react until I was the only "jerk" left at the other end of the line. When I retrieved this psychodelic Hares Ear tied, there was a little noticeable damage left to the tail end of the fly.
This may not sound too exciting of a day for most of you but I was elated that I created interest from a fly that I personally created and in waters I have fished twice this year without a grab, bump, nudge of even a passing glance.
So I was very happy with an outing of 0 and 1 on the American. :) :) :)

Wednesday Caster
10-01-2005, 05:38 PM
PART DEUX: Merced River
For the 2nd part of the day. I had an afternoon appointment and my client showed nearly 1/2 hour late back at her office which put me back on the 80 East bound at 3:00 and then 99 south bound at "04:traffic jam" hour. As previously posted I opted to not fish Putah Creek and decided to push south trying out the Merced River (since it was shown on the flyfishnorcal.com map as beign a fishy river) and arrived around 6:30 on a turnout about 5 miles upriver of the town of Snelling.
There were fishing regs posted on trees which helped out because I did not have my regs book with me to know if it was fishable or not. Walking down to take a quick look at the river I was amazed at how beautiful the water and the rock formations in the river looked (aside from the trash on the bank and a lonely bag of chips left by someone on the rocks mid-river) and excited to see fish rising to the hatch. I'm still figuring out the whole business of entimology so I picked out a dry fly that matched the wings the only identifyable characteristic to me at this point in my FF tenure- a (16) gray hackle yellow body red tail fly and begin to fish it with my 6# gear.
My first fish, an 8"er went air born, because of the slow morning and being ticked off at the delay in my afternoon appointment, I quickly and overpoweringly reacted to the rising fish by yanking it out of the water from 15 feet away and nearly slapping me on the face and with gear designed to take on fish 10 times this poor fishes' diminutive size. After calming down and enjoying some gentle fishing with the beautiful glowing sunset to the west, I was wondering where some of the bigger fish were. During the 30-45 minutes fishing, I had only seen, heard and caught about a dozen smaller fish 6-10" (and a couple of small yellow/gold squaw?) but none sizeable that were my quary for this day.
As the darkness crept in, I relented and retrieved my line from my last cast. I stopped to grasp the beauty of God's creation for us to enjoy and looked west at a silhouette of trees in fading orange and purple glow of the setting sun and then looked east- upriver to a large pool which was now dark glassy waters about 150 yards long. And then, an explosion errupted in the middle of this pool creating a splash that echoed in the silence- they're there. But it was too late and too dangerous for me to wade out to go after it since I was not familiar with the waters here. I thought "This river I must return." Opted not to stop at family's house in Fresno area as scheduled and drove the rest of the way home to LA arriving to the wife waiting at 12:15.
Life is magnificent! :)
Quinn

jbird
10-01-2005, 06:17 PM
Quinn

Beautiful story. Who needs fish with that kind of literature. VERY nice

Jbird

Darian
10-01-2005, 09:38 PM
Amen jbird,..... 8) Quinn,.... You have the magic touch (with words) 8) 8) 8)

Hairstacker
10-02-2005, 12:28 AM
Very nice reports Quinn, thoroughly enjoyed reading them! Felt like I was on the water with you. 8)

Wednesday Caster
10-03-2005, 09:10 AM
Didn't have any pictures to share so I opted for the 1000 words. :D
Quinn