4-04-04 - The Root at Colonial was crowded, probably 20 anglers.

4-08-04 - Root River Quickie!

Waters Fished: Root River
Fish Caught: 0/2
Outing Date: 4-8-04
Weather: Cloudy
Air Temp: Probably 40's
Water Temp: N/A - still no thermometer
Water Level: Pretty Normal
Water Color: Noteably chocolate, even dirtier thank expected, visibility about 6" max.
Fish Species: Steelhead
Pattern Fished: Atomic Satellite Mo Foe, Egg Sucking Leech, Black Stonefly Nymph
Pattern Color: Orange ASMF, ESL in Black / Pink
Fishing Quality: Strange

MS2 had gotten out the morning before and managed his first Root River Steelie. Despite my good intentions of getting on the water prior to work, I couldn't find (and still can't find) my leader wallet. I was up early thankfully to MS2's phonecall, but wasted too much time looking for the leader wallet (with license) so I opted to start at the office bright and early, 6:30 AM. I think I shocked ALL of my coworkers by being the FIRST ONE IN LOL!

I got out around 3:00 PM and made a mad-dash for the Root. Colonial seemed like the right place to be, warm daytime air temps would put fish on the gravel, and well it was a roll of the dice. Before I got into a good spot I watched an angler downstream land a nice steelie.

Turned out to probably be a good choice...I had to search a bit to find holes and ended up pocket fishing along the bank, but did manage two hits from steelhead. The first was a massive strike that resulted in a quick roll, fish off. Big silver steelhead. Hard to say which fly, but I'm going to guess the ESL dropper, as all I got back was my Atomic Satellite Moe Fo!

After a couple suckers, I was reduced to fishing a double-bead bodied black Stonefly pattern...I had left my steelhead box in the CAR! Surprisingly, I got another violent head-shaking strike but again, fish off!

5:00 AM rolled around and it was already time to go...Chromeseeker's dad had made a surprise appearnance and was upstream...I left the hole to the angler who had moved in to work the opposite bank, let him know about the steelies and got on the road to school...for some reason even though I had given myself TWO HOURS to get there I was STILL 15 minutes late...thankfully as the professor you don't really get in trouble for things like that!

  MP