We decided to head to Cow Shoals first, to see what all the excitement about this place in the fall was about. The lot only had a few cars in it when we arrived and the guys in the lot said the fishing had been really slow. We got down to the river and headed down to the bottom of the shoal. I wasn't long before I spotted a bright orange fish holding in the faster current. I took a couple of casts to him and he scattered back downriver. He went downstream about 20 yards and joined a pod of another 3-4 larger fish. They were all in the 20-24 inch range, and appeared to be all males. We took a couple more casts to them before they again scattered. These fish were going to be tough. I decided to do some exploring down below the shoal. On my way down I spotted another large fish holding in a shallower riffle. I decided to try without my indicator this time and within a couple of casts the fish slid over and took my fly. Fish on! It did a big circle in the riffle before deciding that it would head downstream. He came up and thrashed the surface a couple of times and I eventually coaxed it into a side channel. The channel was a little deeper then expected and Rob had fallen in and filled his waders before we finally got the fish in the net. It was a really dark orange male close to 23 inches. With its full spawning colors, it stuck out like a sore thumb in the river. I decided to keep heading down river to check out some of the area below the shoal. The water was still coming down from one generator, so the water down below was fairly deep. I tried fishing the deeper water with no luck. An occasional larger fish would jump, but I couldn't get any to take a fly. We did a little more exploring upriver near the island, but do to the crowds we decided to call it a night.

We got up early the next day and decided to give Libby Shoals a try. We were the only ones in the lot when we arrived and didn't know if we should be excited that we would have the shoal to ourselves or whether the fishing wasn't going to be very good. It turned out to be the later. This shoal had a darker colored rock bottom and didn't seem quite as "fishy" as Cow Shoals. We started fishing below the riffle and began working downstream. We worked down past a couple of the boat docks without even a bite. I did spot one nice rainbow, but for the most part there was no fish on the shoal.

We decided to head up to the Swinging Bridge to fish the shoal above the bridge. The water was incredibly low when we arrived and we were surprised to find 0 fish on the shoal, despite 4-5 anglers fishing the area. The larger pool was pretty crowded, so we decided to continue heading upriver.

After some driving around JFK Park, we decided to just hop in below our campsite, which happened to be right at the first hatchery outlet. There were a few small rainbows cruising near the outlet, but we decided to head upriver to find some faster moving water. We found a couple of fish holding in the first riffle below the dam. Rob was soon hooked into a large rainbow. I headed down to help him net it, but as soon as I got there, the fish popped off. It was nice male in the 20-21 inch range. I had spotted a larger fish holding a little upstream and when I returned it was still there. A couple casts later, I was hooked up and soon had the 18 inch bow in the net. We each caught a couple of smaller rainbows from the riffle before we decided it was time to head off to another river. I did pick up two more rainbow right at the hatchery outlet and missed another.

The majority of time we fished the water was either falling from one generator or had no water running. We tried to find places that didn't have a lot of people, but for the most part where there was fish, there was a lot of people. The best flies for us were trout crack, black beauties, san juans, and eggs worked well for the stocker trout up near the dam.