12-04-2018, 06:36 PM
This is a late post, but before it gets even later I wanted to write about my last trip of the fall. Over thanksgiving I met up with my brother (who now lives in Gilbert) for a day of fly fishing in AZ. I had few expectations for the trip, since I've never though of Arizona's very accessible high country as much of a fly fisher's destination. Too many folks and too little water.
As it happened, though, our time was accidentally perfect. A warm fall day, calm winds, but with ice around the edges early. (Water temps came up to 41 degrees.) After a few hours I hooked into a fish, and by noon I thought I was going to catch five. Then the action started getting faster and faster. Before long we had considerable stretches of time where we were either fighting fish, releasing a fish, or hooking the next one. We ended with 37 between us--as it happens--the day before my 37th birthday. (I would like to make this an annual tradition--hopefully the fishing keeps getting better.) The average fish was around 17 inches, a handful over 20, with a number of smaller ones mixed in.
Very simple fishing. Outside weed edges with sinking tip line, woolly buggers and trailing size 16 tungston surveyor (or probably whatever small nymph you feel like that has a little flash). I tried some buggier streamers, but no reason to resist what the fish want.
For me the moral of the story is that you can have some days of good fishing even in places that get a lot of traffic. It pays to spend time on the water--and a little luck never hurts.
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As it happened, though, our time was accidentally perfect. A warm fall day, calm winds, but with ice around the edges early. (Water temps came up to 41 degrees.) After a few hours I hooked into a fish, and by noon I thought I was going to catch five. Then the action started getting faster and faster. Before long we had considerable stretches of time where we were either fighting fish, releasing a fish, or hooking the next one. We ended with 37 between us--as it happens--the day before my 37th birthday. (I would like to make this an annual tradition--hopefully the fishing keeps getting better.) The average fish was around 17 inches, a handful over 20, with a number of smaller ones mixed in.
Very simple fishing. Outside weed edges with sinking tip line, woolly buggers and trailing size 16 tungston surveyor (or probably whatever small nymph you feel like that has a little flash). I tried some buggier streamers, but no reason to resist what the fish want.
For me the moral of the story is that you can have some days of good fishing even in places that get a lot of traffic. It pays to spend time on the water--and a little luck never hurts.
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