I was up at the club Tuesday & Wednesday with Pete Thompson, Ron Thomas and their guests to spend some time fishing and sharing a wonderful time at the club. Fishing is always fun, but spending a night at the club with friends is real special or priceless as they say in the commercial.  We fished between the lower Gray Eagle pool and the large pool above the Cathedral. The attached pic cover much of the area.

There is a deep pool below this pic that takes a turn and smashes into the Cathedral wall.   As we spread out I decided to fish the area in the middle where the side channel enters the main river.   There is a big flat rock about 15 feet out,  just below where the side channel enters,that I decide to climb and fish from to get a better view.   With the water low I was several feet out of the water and had a good view of the bottom.   I was fishing my standby Tarantula (see pic), with a BWO 16 below about 2 feet.

 

After a few casts upstream I decided to let the flies float into the far riffle which was about 12” to 18” deep, You can see the area in the river pic attached. It’s the lower white water area. As the flies entered the riffle I was expect a hit because it seemed like a good feeding area. On the third cast BANG!!! This large brown came up and really smacked the Tarantula. I knew I had him as there was no doubt that he grabbed that fly hard and it was buried deep into his tongue. He was strong, but I had plenty of room to play him. I tried a trick Bill Carnazzo had suggested which was to lower the rod to the water perpendicularly and start reeling. The fish came out of the fast water quite easily and I now had control of him. I waived the guys up at the lower Gray Eagle pool to come down as I wanted a pic. As they arrived the fish had tired and I was able to land him. The colors were beautiful. Pictures rarely do justice to a beautiful fish and the attached pic shared this trait. This fish made my day.

 

That evening the guys cooked up a great meal and we shared some fine wines and cigars. There is nothing like having a great steak and fine bottle of wine with friends after fishing the day. We sat around the campfire until midnight. As I said previously it was priceless.

With the flows down because of the annual maintenance period fishing has been nothing but spectacular. If you haven’t fished the low flows you need to get up there quick before they start up generating again. With all the extra water this year there may be a water sale to down south cities which would raise the flows considerably for a while. Hope to see you up at  the club.