4-22-03 - My main area of concentration this evening was the riffles upstream from Hwy C. It only produced a couple smolts however.

A chunky brown trout "smolt" (really a "fingerling" I think...these can't be YEARLINGS)...by the calculations about 7" long. We have been seeing some that are even larger and approaching the legal size of 10"!

A closeup of the same brown smolt. You can see that the relative HUGE size of the hook and fly did not prevent this guy from engulfing it!

4-22-03 - Sprint Fishing against the clock!

Rivers Fished: Root River
Fish Caught: 0 (of the "important" kind)
Outing Date: 4-22-03
Weather: Sunny
Air Temp: 40's
Water Temp: 42F
Water Level: average
Water Color: overall moderately stained and semi-clear
Fish Species: Steelhead & Small Brown Trout
Pattern Fished: Olive Spey
Pattern Color: Gold & Olive
Fishing Quality: Declining

Today would be another mad-dash for sprint fishin; make a mad dash after work over the border, pick one hole and work it work it work it! Well, left work and got into the Root at 6:45! I'd have until 8:10 to fish!

Bart (Chromeseeker) & Bob (Gumbo) beat me to the river by a few minutes. When I arrived at downstream Lincoln Park I found Bob, who had already had one on with the Black Heron, but had lost it on a rocketing jump!

I tried a couple unnamed marabou patterns in the pool while a very friendly guy was working a redding pair upstream of the riffles. For some reason it seems that hte marabou speys (aka. Spider Speys) are prone to snagging up on underwater structure, so I shortened my leader to about 8 feet and tied on the Olive Spey.

I moved down to the riffles upstream from Spring Street and "worked it good". I picked up 2 chunky brown smolts but didn't get anything else. I STILL get a kick out of the fact that on small trout streams, these "smolts" would be respectable trout. However, these fish are our future bruisers, so it's not like we're targeting them and they are always released quickly. I DID include a photo of one of the Brown Smolts so you can get an idea of the looks and size.

A few weeks back I thought that using a large fly would eliminate my "smolt haul", but that failed to be the case...as you can see in the pictures the smolts had no problem inhaling a Diachii 2162 #1! One positive thing that Gumbo and I have concluded; when swinging more traditional speys you have considerably less snags and hangups on underwater structure...and when you do snag it's often easier to get your rig unhooked without wading out to it.

Anyways, Bart was working up in Island Park and met up with Bob. Around 7:40 we got out the cell phones as we hadn't found any more fish, and moved up into Lincoln Park.

Somehow I managed to get there first, and after clearing my entrance into the upper riffles with the guy who was fishing the very head, I got in. Bob & Bart soon followed, and we really power fished that riffle; Bob drifting the Black Heron, me swinging the Olive Spey, and Bart working a dual egg rig. We did sight one or two fish, but they managed to run our gauntlet. Bart was the only one to hook up with anything...another chunky brown.

We pulled out of the water at 8:10 (30 minutes after sundown) to chat a bit and get packed up for the trip home. While we all had fish on the line of some sort or another, we basically got skunked!

  MP