We drove out of the snow on the Taylor and headed to the Pan. It wasn’t long before we stepped into the flat water that we spotted fish. We each landed a couple of nice fish before working down to the bend pool. I spotted a nice 23 inch brown and it only took a couple of casts before she sipped the fly in. She fought well and after a couple of runs was landed. I soon spotted a nice rainbow working his way up into the flat water. I hooked him only to have him spit the hook. He returned to a nearby riffle where I was able to coax him into taking my fly again. It was a nice 21 inch hook jaw bow.

We started the next day in the toilet bowl. With the water so low it was tough to get the fish to take our mysis, even with 6x and 7x. Rob spotted a monster female finning in the tail of the pool and I crossed over to the other side to give me more casting room. When I got over to the other side, I couldn’t believe my eyes. There was a pod of 5-6 rainbows and they were all 10+ pounds. The largest was a male that was probably in the 32-34 inch range and possibly 15+ pounds. We worked the fish, but had trouble getting them to take our flies. They were incredibly tippet shy and were scared of any spilt shot that went anywhere near them. As I worked the fish, Rob managed to catch a 7-8 pound rainbow in the slack water behind the toilet bowl and Tim landed a nice 22 inch bow in the tail of the pool. I finally hooked up with one of the large females. I fought the fish for close to 20 minutes before the hook popped out back behind the second shoot. Tim worked his mysis in the tailout and managed to hook up to a nice 23 inch rainbow. We each managed some smaller fish before I finally tied into the big boy. It was the largest fish we had spotted and it was up for the fight. The fish took me everywhere, went into my backing, and went up into both of the shoots. I was finally making ground and we had seen flashes of the fish. This fish also headed around the backside of the second shoot and again my hooks popped out. The afternoon sun chased all of the bigger fish to deeper water and we headed downriver to finish the evening. We returned the next morning, but the fish never came up shallow and stayed in the deeper water. We fished the section between the bend pool and the Baetis Bridge, and were surprised at the number of fish. Rob and I hammered the rainbows and managed to get some off the top fishing BWO’s. The evening slowed down as we fished some of the lower river, picking up a fish or two in every hole. We returned to the upper river in the late evening and each managed some smaller fish. I did briefly see one nice fish in the 24-26 inch range, but with the sun well below the mountain top, all I could do was drift the pool and hope for the best. The best flies were mysis, black beauties, miracle nymphs, black biots, pheasant tails, and BWO’s. The flows were low around 60 cfs.