The Taylor had a couple pigs down in the catch and release section, but with the flows so low they were spooked easily. You could only get a couple of drifts with the larger fish and if you had any drag the fish would swim off. The good news was that the river held a lot more smaller rainbows, meaning that spawning has been successful the last couple of years. We did manage to land one nice bow, about four pounds and many smaller browns between 14-20 inches. I did break off a couple of nice rainbows, one close to 28 inches that was holding under the bridge. Fishing at night was good, not as many fish as last summer, but there were some nice fish holding in the pool below the bridge. Most fish were in the 20-22 inch range with a few larger ones. We might have stayed and fished a couple more nights, but the beavers didn’t seem to appreciate us being there. During the day the best flies were the miracle nymph and the black beauty. The flies didn’t matter so much as having drag free drifts and not spooking the fish. At night we used mysis, although with the lower flows it didn’t appear that many were coming through the dam, but the fish still seemed pretty eager to take them.

 

August 18-20, 2002