What's fishing like on the North Fork with the water
unseasonably low, and a lower than normal trout population density? That
was the question that stayed in the back of my mind as my friend Howard
and I drove from St. Louis to ROLF on a moonless Friday night at the end
of October. The answer was that the fishing was DIFFICULT, but we caught
some and had a good time trying to figure out how to fish under less than
ideal river conditions.
We got settled into the fisherman's cabin on Friday night, had a short
visit from Myron, and tied a few flies in preparation for Saturday's fishing. We floated from ROLF down to the Patrick bridge starting on a
Saturday morning that began foggy but cleared quickly into a nice warm
sunny day. The first couple hours were frustrating as Howard tried to coax
up some fish with dry flies and I picked thick green algae off my beadhead
prince nymph after almost every cast. In frustration, I tied on a crackleback and swung it through the run we were fishing. After a few
casts, I caught my first fish, a 12" brown, but had no further luck there.
We moved on down stream to deeper riffles and runs with less algae in them, and I went back to dead drifting nymphs after Howard succumbed to
the perils of subsurface fishing and quickly caught a brown trout on his
pheasant tail. As we floated between riffles, I spotted significantly fewer and generally smaller trout compared to my last visit to the North
Fork, though there were still a few awe inspiring big ones to tantalize
us. It was slow all day, but I managed to catch a few here and there bringing my total to 7 fish for the day with a couple LDRs as well. The
fish were all in the 10-14" size range, which is smaller than on my previous trip, but in keeping with what we observed for the population in
general. We tried a bit of everything and never found any technique or fly
that was outperforming the others. Myron warned us to be humble before we
left, and he was right. Fishing the North Fork can be tough.
The next morning, we fished the waters on ROLF starting at The Falls, one
of the few places where I had poor luck on a previous trip. Perhaps my
diminished expectations helped reverse my fishing karma, or perhaps I had
found the right fly, a size 18 pheasant tail. Much to my surprise, within
an hour or two, I had caught 5 fish near the Falls and one more on the
next riffle downstream. It rained for a while so we took a break, but before leaving, Howard, the dry fly purist, also reversed his fortunes by
nailing a beautiful rising brown trout on his yellow humpy. It was a nice
way to end our trip and alleviate some of the previous day's frustrations.
I don't know when I'll get back to the North Fork, but when I do, it will
be with renewed optimism and humility.
Jim Umen |
