The water was finally up this summer, but the big fish still didn't seem to be around. There were more fish then past summers, but the size has seen a noticable decrease. Jerry started out right away with a 22 inch brown and we both caught a couple more in the 18-20 inch range. I worked one rainbow for a while, but couldn't get it to take anything under the surface. I went through about 5-6 different dries before I finally got it to take a size 22 adams. It wasn't a huge fish, maybe 20 inches, but it was rewarding to catch after having it decline so many offerings. The shallower top section had a lot of 18-22 inch rainbows, but as always the fish were notoriously picky. We hooked a couple, but only managed to land one or two fish. We tried fishing into the night and caught another 8-10 fish each, mostly browns. We heard rumors of a large rainbow in the lower section, so we searched the area the next day. We saw a lot of fish, but the big one was not to be found. We headed back upstream and caught a couple more 18-20 inch fish above the bridge, Jerry even managed to grab a 21 brown with his bear hands. As we were leaving we spotted a nice 28 inch rainbow holding the deeper section above the bridge. After a couple of casts we lost track of it as it took off upstream. At least there are still a couple of nice fish around in the C&R Section. Hopefully with another good winter, the bigger fish will start coming back down from the dam this next Spring/Summer.

August 6-7, 2005