Sunday evening I opted to take it easy and fish the Mckenzie on foot rather than by boat. The fishing was good pretty good, I caught north of twenty fish in about three hours. Unfortunately, I didn’t get the big redside that I was after. The first fish was a feisty wild fish that ate a #12 Possie Bugger:
In the hours that followed planters ate my offerings like it was their job scarfing up the Possie Bugger, #12 Parachute Adams, #16 Light Cahill Wet and #8 Golden Stone (Stimulator). All of the planters were healthy and spirited and fought like they understood the gravity of their predictament. When the hatch came off the river didn’t erupt with bugs like it did on the lower section a couple days ago, rather the hatch was fairly modest. There were a few caddis coming off sporadically and an adult laying eggs now and again. There were also a few golden stones around. The hatch was enough though to get the fish looking up and this native redside approached what I was after:
I know that hole harbors larger trout. I’ve caught them there every year and catch at least one decent native almost every time I fish there. Once you’ve found a productive piece of water, provided a high water event doesn’t change the structure of a piece of river having favorable habitat conditions you can know that spot will continue to crank out nice rainbows.–KM
