East Branch

Got out to fish with Billy on the East Branch on Saturday 19th for the evening hatch.  What a nice river.  WE went to the gorge area and parked the Prius at the entrance and took his truck down the access road - Thank goodness as I'm not sure the Prius would have made it all the way down the road.  Caught a couple of rainbows and a brown.  I was trying for a brookie as Billy said he caught one earlier and it would have been neat to catch the trout trifecta on a different river.  All but one of the fish came on soft hackles.  The rown came to a fire orange soft hackle which he took with him when he was released as I could not for the life of me get the hook out of the fishes mouth.  I turned and lost another fish in the same hole using an yellow soft hackle as well.  I then decided to start nymphing seeing as I had already caught a fish on a soft hackle. I have been playing with these flies all spring and still can't quite get the feel for the down and across movement of them so I have been fishing them up and down in the stream.  This seems to work well for me. The next fish taken was a nice rainbow on a red bead caddis.  The bow was located just where you would have expected him to be, right in the feeding seem. After that things went quite for a while.  Finally I tied on a small caddis bead head in copper color with a pink soft hackle as the trailer.  Nothing for the longest time.  So Billy and I decided to try some new water as he was not seeing many fish either.  He is still learning the river so we drove down to a nice looking area and waded in.  Working up stream I found a nice seem that looked productive but could not rise a fish.  Working my way further up stream I was on another nice seem just as darkness was approaching.  Suddenly the fish turned on.  It seemed like every other cast I was hooking into a fish.  In a span of about 10 min I had brought 4 rainbows to hand some of them giving quite the aerial display.  AMAZINGLY all of them were caught on the PINK soft hackle!!! Go figure.  I tied the fly on just to tell Meg I fished it and it was the winner for the day.  Got back to the car at 9:30 and was home by 11.  All in all a nice time on the river.  Now I need to tie up some more soft hackles for a repeat on this river.