I fished Davis at the Fairview access from 3:00 to 5:00 on Friday (10/21) and 11:00 to 4:15 on Saturday. The wind was blowing about 10-15 mph on Friday. On Saturday it was calm for the first two hours and then blew VERY hard for the last three hours. I had to fish from shore due to a chronic foot problem and basically sat in one spot fishing the same area. I caught two on Friday (20", 19") and four on Saturday (20", 18", 20", 21"). Even though I didn't catch a lot of fish, I was very happy with my results considering what I thought were some pretty tough conditions. There was a lot of loose debris in the water so I had to clean off my flies on virtually every cast. Since the fish were typically only about 15 feet from the drop off to deep water, I used a tippet of only 4 ½ to 6 feet. All of the fish hit my bottom fly, a #14 bead head callibaetis nymph. I used a Sheep Creek Special and a blood midge as the upper fly but neither produced a single hit.

One technique that worked well for me in the harsh wind was to increase the size of my indicator and add a small split shot about a foot above the bottom fly. I would make a short cast about 20-25 feet from the drop off quartered down wind. After the nymphs would sink the indicator would wind up around 15 feet from the drop off where most of my strikes were occurring. I would let my indicator drift down wind and that's when the fish would hit. Four of my six fish were caught using this approach. I also tried to shorten my casts; longer casts with lots of line on the water seemed to create more wind drag. Shorter casts allowed for much shorter drifts but the drifts seemed to have less drag.