|
Weekend of 12-14 Oct 07
On Friday, I drove up to Oakdale to visit/fish with my buddy Dave Salzer. While I waited for him to get home from work, I drove out to Knights Ferry east of Oakdale, and took a little walk upstream. The weather had been threatening, but seemed to have lightened up, so I did not wader up, I just stuck my light rain jacket and a Polartech vest in the day pack, put on neoprene feet and wading boots and headed out. I found the place I was looking for with no trouble, and started fishing around the rocks and the drop off. Good looking water, so I had a small parachute GFT on. Hooked a smolt of some kind early on. It must have been under four inches. I was laughing so hard I shook him off. About ten minutes later it started to drizzle, and about the time I got the vest and jacket on, it commenced to dump buckets. After a bit of no action, I switched to a #14 Adams with a PT dropper. That combination got absolutely no action, and I finally left after about ninety minutes total. Surprise of the day: my lightweight REI Anorak isn’t waterproof any more – my arms were soaked, and the only thing that I am sure was waterproof was the bottom of the front pocket, where I had stashed my wallet, cash and cough drops. There was a nice puddle in the bottom of the pocket. Oh, well… at least part of it is still waterproof.
Had dinner with Dave and his lovely wife and daughter, Chris and Isabella, and after a relatively early night, we hung it up to head out the next morning.
Saturday we drove up to the Beardsley afterbay with our float tubes. Dave has only had his for a little while, and this was his first float in it. The water was pretty low, and didn’t look too promising, but we floated it anyway. The good thing about the really low water was that you could see the bottom structure pretty well for future reference. I also had my Fishing Buddy Fish Finder along, to figure out the shape of the bottom. It was a long afternoon. I finally kicked up to the inlet and fished the white water there with a dry/ dropper. The dropper was a Golden Stone (Thanks Steve!!), and I finally hooked and landed a fish around 3 PM. It was a nice little brown, about twelve inches, and very energetic in the current. Dave got a fish, also on a nymph, about forty minutes later, sitting out in the after bay and casting in under some bushes. I think his was brown as well.
About 4:30 PM, we decided we had had enough floating, so we got out, and set up to go fish the downstream area, which we did. As we were walking up the trail, I saw and picked up a brand new Kast Master, probably a 3/8 ounce, with a treble hook and all the barbs on it. The area is at least barbless, but the lure looked brand new. I stuck it in my small nymph box. We started fishing pretty high up relatively speaking. It was getting late, and I hate bushwhacking (and shin-whacking) in the dark. We hit a stretch of plunge pools and plunges for about thirty minutes. I got two fish, one a very small rainbow, and one a nine inch brown, before it got too dark to see the flies. Again, both were on nymphs fished as a dropper. Actually, the bats were not having any trouble discerning the flies at all. They moved my dry upstream a couple of times. That IS disconcerting when you are not expecting it.
Along about 6:30, we packed up and hiked out. Dave had gotten several very small fish smacking his fly around. Not clear if he actually landed any, but who cares. They pulled!!
We stopped in Sonora, at a newly relocated restaurant/wine bar to meet one of Dave’s old Gallo buddies. We had burgers, they had beer and I drank a pot of coffee. The burgers and the coffee were very good, and the boys were drinking Pilsner Urquel, which is hardly ever bad. We made it home a bit after eleven, and toddled off to bed.
Sunday we went to 1030 Mass at St Mary’s in Oakdale, and then I bade farewell. Dave had originally planned for us to fish two days at Beardsley, but had run out of kitchen pass for Sunday. I had my teeth set for another day of fishing, but I did not want to go back to Knights Ferry, because on weekends the place is a zoo. After ruminating a fair amount early Sunday morning, it occurred to me that I had not been to the Merced River in a while, so I decided to give it a shot. It’s about a two and a half hour drive from Oakdale on California Highways 49 and 140, and a beautiful ride it is. I just wish it was a bit shorter. I got to the Foresta Bridge about 3 PM. The river was really low. I was not sure it was going to be worth fishing, but I checked out a pool where I have had decent luck in the past. There was enough water to fish, and the right bank was pretty deep, so I gave it a shot. I was working my way up from the bottom of the pool, when the fresh upstream breeze suddenly switched direction, and blew from behind me. It lifted my just broken in Tilley hat right off my head, and blew it across the water to the deepest part of the pool. I immediately tried to hook the hat, but I had on a #16 GFT parachute, and I could not get a bite. Trying to keep an eye on the hat, now sinking, I popped off the fly and 5X tippet, and started to tie on the Kast Master from the day before. Above the Foresta Bridge is all artificial, barbless, catch and release. But if I could catch that hat, I was not releasing it. I often tell my Scouts that you don’t really know a knot until you can tie it without looking at it. I guess I don’t really know the clinch knot. When I took my eye off the hat, as it was sinking, to finish the knot, I lost sight of it. I thought I knew about where it was so I gave the Kast Master a few flings but to no avail. I finally hung a big rock and had to break the lure off. I never did get my hat back. I hated losing the hat, but it had my magnifiers and my New Zealand pin on it as well, and some strike indicator fluff stuffed in the crown. I was a bit annoyed.
I went back to the truck to grab another hat and some new magnifiers. There’s a LOT of room in my truck. I tied on a # 14 GFT and a Flashback Pheasant tail nymph as a dropper, and went back to try again. Some days chicken, some days feathers. On about my sixth cast into the plunge, a nice rainbow came up and ate the dry. It was a decent fish, and of course the net (both of them) was in the truck, where there is lots of room. It took a few minutes, but I finally landed the fish, flipped him upside down, snapped a photo, de-flied him and set him free. He was pretty grumpy as he left, but as soon as I turned him right side up in the water, he was off like a shot! After another half hour or so of no action, I decided to move to the next (possibly) good hole downstream. There’s a real nice hatch there some evenings in the summer, so I thought there might be a few fish there even in low water. The water was low, but there was enough for a fish, so I watched for a bit. It looked as though there were a couple of small fish rising upstream, so I walked up there, fishing the dry - dropper as I went. No luck at all, and the rising stopped. After I worked the whole stretch, I sat down on a rock to watch the stream and see what if anything was happening. It was after a few minutes that the’rises’ started up again. There was a flock of caddis ovipositing on the surface, dipping and leaving. After a while, I even saw one ‘motor boating’ across the surface. I guess she was done. While I was sitting there, I also saw three decent fish cruising the area. They must have been nymphing, but they sure were not interested in my nymph or in anything on the surface. The motor boat scooted right over them once, and they never even looked up that I could tell. They were sure skittish though. The dusk was coming on, and I lifted my sun glasses off my nose, and dropped them onto their lanyard, and all three fish bolted. Despite the disinterest in the surface, I did tie on a small Goddard caddis (the only caddis I had with me. Gotta fix that!) and tried it. I did get a real small fish (or maybe an amorous bug) to take a swipe at it, but no other interest at all. I headed back to the coast about 6:30. It took longer than the three hours I had planned on, but I was a contented fisherman.
|
Favoured: 0
