The fishing was again amazing on the Frying Pan, as the river has quickly become one of my favorites. The fish were spread out throughout the upper river and many large rainbows could be found in the riffles. Soon after arriving in the evening, I hooked into a nice rainbow close to 4 pounds, only to have it quickly snap my line with the turn of its head. My disappointment didn’t last long as 10 minutes later I hooked into another large rainbow close to 3 pounds. After a battle that included many jumps, I got the rainbow into to the net. After landing a couple more nice fish we went to bed excited about fishing the next day. While the fishing was difficult for others on the river, the next day was one of the best days of fishing I have ever had. I managed to land another large rainbow close to six pounds and a monster cutthroat of 7 pounds. In all I managed to catch 5 rainbows over 5 pounds and a couple more 3-4 pound rainbows. Most of the fish were caught in rifles and the magic fly was a black biot emerger. The fish took many different flies, but the best flies were the black emerger, barr emerger, pheasant tails, black beauties, and RSII’s. The browns preferred beadhead flies with the copper john being the best fly. Rob landed many large browns fishing in the bend pool with an indicator.

The next day we decided to try fishing in the “toilet bowl” as we had heard that Rainbows up to 20 pounds had been caught there. We also had heard rumors that close to 1/3 of the fish in the river were in this pool. The rumors proved to be true. We fished here all day and caught fish every five or six casts. Most were browns, with an occasional rainbow mixed in. One rainbow was close to 4 pounds with a couple others near 3. The browns were all 12-22 inches and were a lot of fun to catch. The large rainbows didn’t seem to be active, although I had one fish take me into my backing in less the 5 seconds before it broke me off. In all we caught close to 70 trout each and many of them were over 20 inches. All of the fish were caught on mysis shrimp and were caught throughout the pool. It was another amazing day on the “Pan.”