A Hit and A Miss, Exploring a Couple New Streams

A friend of mine and I have been eyeballing a few streams on the map.  One is a small trib, and another was a big main branch of a stream that had little access once you got up on it.  With all the rain we have been getting, water levels were good in both streams.  Stream 1 fished awesome.  Good size fish for the size runs they were in and tons of fish at that.  You'd look at a run and say "no self respecting trout would hold in 2 inches of water in a 1 ft by 2 ft run" but you would pull out a fat 8 inch trout. 

False Solomon's Seal

Stinging Nettles were thick on this stream.  I was stung a time or two or dozen.

Did I mention the colors on these fish?  You'd think it was fall.

Off to Stream 2, which was disappointing.  Stream had some nice runs and pools, but just lacked fish.  Caught maybe a half dozen, but they were all small in comparison to the size pools they were in.  And the gnats....you would literally have a gnat fly into your eyeball every 30 seconds.  Swarms of them.  After an hour of that, we decided to cut our losses.

Sums up this stream.  Someone hiked a section of a couch a good ways back this trail.

Mountain Mint

Not a bad way to spend the day learning a new area. 

Soggy Camping Trip

I'm about two weeks late posting this report up, due to being busy, but this trip was an interesting one.  A few friends and I had been planning a spring backpacking trip for April.  Well that backpacking trip fell on a weekend we got 3 inches of rain spread out Friday thru Sunday and I had some family stuff unexpectedly pop up so it all worked out.  Postponed the trip into first weekend of May, and guess what, we got 2.5 inches of rain the day before our trip.  That made for 12 inches of rain in three week period.  One of the guys bailed, me and my other friend decided to just take our chances and switched game plans from backpacking to car camping. 



Bad Omen when the speedometer isn't working?


Was greeted by the trib we were supposed to fish with this.

 

This was when we realized we wouldn't be fishing that first day.

This trib was pumping.  Made for a good waterfall.

Rocks do not make good splitting stands.

Clouds finally started to break apart and the moon made an appearance.

Showy Orchid

If you look closely, you can see my friend trying to cross the river so we can fish the trib on opposite side of river.

This was our "trail"

Finally a fish.

But the trib was still pumping out some crazy water.

And the rain and wind started back up.  After an hour of fishing in it, we found an overhanging to wait it out and dry out.

Coffee and soup break.  After a couple hours of it not letting up, we were concerned about the main river rising and not being able to get back across so we called the trib fishing off.

After going into town for Pizza (more on this later) and hanging around camp, I decided to give the main river a go and was rewarded.

See the orange lanyard on the stick? That was were the water levels were 24 hours ago.

Pink Lady Slipper

This Buffalo Chicken Pizza was a bad choice.  Lets just say my friend picked the pizza we ate and we both didn't fight each other for the left overs.......



Up top on stream levels were very fishable the third day.

 While the plans changed multiple times, still was a good time camping with a little fishing thrown in.