We arrived at the river around 3:00 AM and decided to start fishing right below the dam. There was a heavy fog over the water that was a little eerie, but we were anxious to hit the water. There was no moon, so the only light on the water was from the light in the parking lot. We started up near where Dry Run Creek runs out and worked our way downstream. I was throwing various sculpin patterns on the bottom, while Rob fished a beadhead wooly bugger. Fishing started out pretty slow, but right out before the boat ramp Rob hooked into a nice fish, a rainbow close to 16 inches. It wasn’t long before he was hooked into and landed another fish, this time a 16 inch brown. I decided to head further downriver, as I had spotted some fish feeding in shallower water. The fish spooked when I got down there, but after a while they came back. It appeared that were rooting out scuds or sow bugs from the rocks, but they didn’t seem to want anything that I threw at them. By this time it was just starting to get light out, so we decided to head back downriver the handicap access.

We were the first ones to the lot and we started seeing fish as soon as we got up to the island. I fished started fishing the deeper side, as there were a lot of fish holding near the bank. I hooked up with a nice 18 inch brown, but the hook popped out right as I was landing him. I caught another smaller brown and decided to continue heading up to the top of the island in search of larger fish. Two fish in the 20-22 inch range were holding in the shallower water at the top of the island, but spooked as soon as I got up there. I didn’t even have a chance to make any casts. I could see a couple of fish holding in a pocket behind a boulder and within a couple of casts my indicator went under and I was hooked up. It turned out to be a brightly colored 16 inch rainbow. Rob was catching fish pretty consistently on the other side and he was soon yelling that he was hooked in a good fish. I went over and helped him get the fish netted. It was a real skinny brown close to 21 inches that looked like it had seen better days. It had a couple of lamprey marks and looked like it had been hit by some of the vultures near the river. The island soon became ridiculously packed with people, so we decided to try to head downriver to get away from the crowds.

I found a sweet pool a couple hundred yards below the handicap access that was full of 12-16 inch rainbows. They would hit every 2-3 casts and it was long before I had caught 15 fish and missed at least that many more. Rob came down to join me and before I knew it he was hooked up with a nice fish right behind me. I could tell it was a larger fish, so I headed over with the net. It was big and turned out to be the best fish of the day. It was a brightly colored male close to 24 inches. This was the kind of fish we were after. We continued fishing the hole, each catching a couple more fish before things started to slow down. We continued working downriver to the bottom of the island, but didn’t pick up any more fish. We decided to head down to the Little Red River around noon, as the crowds were really bad and they were still running water on the White.

The generators were off the entire time we fished the river and the fish tended to be holding in any sections that had faster water with some depth to it. The river was a lot more packed than in the past due to water being run on the White. There were some redds around, but there weren’t any fish on them. The best fly for us again was trout crack, with black beauties, copperheads, san juans, and weighted wooly buggers also working well.