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I got a pass to go fishing today and struck out early to hit the East Fork Carson. I figured I had a few things going against me on this trip... it is July 5th, so there crowds were an issue and secondly, I had only fished this river once before and it had been just full of anglers. Got to the river about 8:00 or so and hiked downstream from the bridge there just out of Markleeville. Three other cars in the parking lot, not too bad.
Got down to the water and didn't see another angler. There had been a few folks near the bridge. Caught an 8-9"er quickly. This fish was missing half of one of it's gill plates... I saw another fish like that. Not a good look. I don't know if those are hatchery fish that have made their way down, but they didn't look great.
After a few minutes I moved down a little bit to a spot I remembered from the first time I had fished there. For some reason I reached into my fly box and pulled out a fly that I think someone from the board gave me. It's kind of like a Fox Pupah, but it has some cdc and flashaboo in it and a clear bead. I've never fished it before and I can't say why I went for that fly when I had plenty of my own BHPT's that are my go-to flies, but that is what I did. It was a good decision. The water looked very good, big fish water, but I wasn't getting anything. I had talked to an angler on Thursday who had said "the difference between a good California fisherman and a great California fisherman is a splitshot". That was tumbling around the back of my head and I put on another split shot. A couple of casts later I hooked into a moster of a rainbow. The big fish seemed to be inspired by our olympian gymnists as it jumped three times, once getting about FOUR feet out of the water. Seriously, I've never seen a fish jump that high. Got it to hand, about 21-22" and a serious weight probelm... just fat as could be. Glad I got it some exercise. The jumping was nice, but it didn't pull any line off my 4 wt and it was in and released very quickly and in good shape.
With that fish in the books the rest of the day was a stroll. I ended up with 15 to hand, one brown, the rest bows... most pretty small, but a few around 12"-14". Only saw one other guy down river and we gave each other plenty of space. After about 3.5 hours I was getting close to the bridge. That's when the felt fell off one of my wading shoes, so I figured I'd just head straight to the car. My wife was surprised to hear from me after only about 4.5 hours, since she gave me the whole day off. I just figured I couldn't improve on the day and decided not to try.
There were lots of bugs on/near the water, even saw a couple of risers, but nothing that would convince someone to tie one on.
This was my first really productive day of trout fishing in a long time. It was nice to start feeling like I knew what I was doing again.
And that is my fishing report.
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Favoured: 0
