Posted ByMatt on November 16, 2003 at 23:02:11:
We fished Saturday just below Corral Creek. Overcast and cold, and just a little rain falling. With the good reports, I wanted to get back to the flyfishing, Karen stuck with the spin gear. I started with a black Woolybugger with an orange conehead, and fished the slack end of a few pools, no results. Karen was getting bit right away on a Panther Martin. As I moved upstream, I thought I saw a few swirls on the surface in the middle of a nice run. Surface feeding? On a cold Nov afternoon? Must have been my imagination. I moved to another pool, and hooked my first fish, about 12". I was looking back downstream, and, sure enough, there WERE fish feeding on the surface. I looked at the water, and saw a few Caddis on the surface, and what appeared to be mayflies as well. So I dug out my dry fly box, and was in the process of tying on dry, when I slipped off the rock I was standing on, and slammed down my left knee on a very pointy rock. Water gushed into my hip waders, I was up to my elbows, and was watching the contents of my dry fly box float downstream! I got up as quickly as I could and scooped up a few of the errant flies, but most of them were now out of reach, and sinking. Not only bad luck, but my knee was screaming. After spending a couple of minutes shaking off the pain, I got back to fishing. Ever had one of those days? Nothing seemed to go right after that. Catching trees, rocks, sticks, couldn't cast where I wanted to, and couldn't seem to get a hit. Meanwhile, Karen had landed several in the 10-14" range. I headed downsteam to meet up with her, found a likely pool, and switched over to an Olive Matuka. First cast, landed a 10" fish. Next cast landed a 12" fish. After a few more casts, we decided to call it a day. Total count- Karen landed 5 and I landed 5, from 8-14", lost contents of one dry fly box, and gained one large bruise on the kneecap. Matt