Praying for Rain

Ok, so for two days I had to stay off the river. Why? Thunder storms and lightning and not necessarily in that order. Tuesday I headed up early afternoon got a couple of hits but then the wind picked up and so did the clouds; those big storm clouds in the picture above were a warning of things to come! But I tried some more until a piece of the coating on my running line fell off - ok, someone is telling me to head on home and so I did!

So Wed. and Thur. last week were no fishing days because of the weather and most particularly the thunderstorms and lightning. Wed., the conditions were just about right for a chance of a tornado to roll through, but as it was only a very severe thunderstorm cam on by. Thursday was more of the same and since I really have an aversion for lightning I did not head out.

Saturday was another epic warning from the weather watchers for "high winds, thunder storms". So early Sat. morning I headed out early to try my luck before any storm activity rolled in. As luck would have it, I was out but the fish were no where to be found. By Sat. afternoon the lightning was cracking, the skies were very ominous and then it rained. It rained hard for over an hour and by that time the river was turning chocolate and rising from the 1.8" of rainfall. Still not enough to make up for the almost 5" defecit we have in the area.

Sunday Rob and I headed up early. The river had come down and bit and was still dirty, but we had decided to fish farther up river and closer to the damn release. We ended up meeting up with Fred, Jerry, Lisa and Stark and fished the afternoon. It was better weather with a few light showers but no lightning! Lisa was killin' 'em with a Silver Doctor tube fly that Jerry gave. She got the Farmington Grand Slam - brookie, bows and browns. The browns she landed were all really big fish too.

So I was headed up today but last checked the flow rate and the release from the damn is now 117cfs and I just can't bring myself to do it. I just hope it doesn't stay that low for too long. If it does I will take the fishing and put that on the back burner and just do some practice casting while checking out new parts of the river.

Looks like today is a good fly tying kinda day. Think I will try some tube flies while praying for rain.

Earlier in the week I landed this bow with a march brown wet. Ended up getting three more that morning.

Jerry Jahn tied up this aluminum tube fly and I used it yesterday. A 12" bow smacked this thing and he smacked it HARD.