CW
10-25-2005, 01:31 PM
Fished Hat Creek with Putnam, "Little One", and our buddy Steve Larson. We fished the Creek just above the bridge across from Clearwater and upstream, and also the plume downstream a bit. So beautiful up there, half the day spent just watching the water. Midge emergers, BWOs, and tiny mayflies (18 was almost too big - 20s and 22s were better) seemed to do the trick for us. Wish I could say the fishing was on fire for us, but it wasn't - we did get into them, but we had to work our tails off for them. Tough fishing, but really rewarding - especially having to deal with the first 20 feet of moss that would hug the riverbank, and then the moving water just past - your puddled cast would hopefully drift far enough. Seems a bit weird, but you would be walking the bank, and a meathead would come stand about 10 feet from you, launch a huge night crawler and stick a 16 inch fish, but the fish would still be rising with all the disturbed water. 6x worked most of the day. Water was gin clear as usual, and saw one of the biggest spring creek fish ever of my life - easily 30+ inches long and feeding actively just under a flimsy canopy of weeds, tilting up and side to side with slow deliberate action, but never breaking the surface. Incredible, but I'm sure this fish is hardly the largest fish there .... wondering about some of the older, HUGE "grandpa" fish that have been hooked and not landed by some anglers?