I arrived at Baptist shortly after the sun to find the river a foot or so up and a little off color. In other words it was near perfect streamer conditions. I started off tossing a black circus peanut and picked up a really good brown at the parking lot on my fifth or sixth cast. It was my best fish of the day. After that I walked up the road to the trail and went downstream. I ended up losing the peanut and switched to a new fly I came up with. It's very similar to a circus peanut but the front hook has a laser dub head. It has a tungsten cone head but the cone is behind the laser dub. Putting it behind the dub helps keep the head more full which pushes more water and helps get the fish's attention. It worked fairly well and I continued fishing it as I made my way downstream. When I finally decided it was time to turn around I switched over to a yellow articulated zoo cougar. I figured it would be a good idea to switch flies since the fish had already seen the fly I had on when I was fishing downstream. I fished the cougar all the way back picking up five more, only one of which was a brown. When I got back to the parking lot I switched rods and did a little nymphing, but no catching.
The key seemed to be casting as close to the bank as I could because that's where the fish were. The river was moving fairly quick so I guess they were hugging the banks to stay out of the fast water. The fast water did make for some tricky wading in some spots but assuming you're careful it was perfectly safe. Another great thing was that I only saw three other fishermen the entire day. One was going downstream as I was coming up and the other two showed up right before I was leaving.
All in all it was a good day of streamer fishing for someone who isn't much of a streamer fisherman. I didn't catch a ton of fish but they were all above average. I guess that makes sense since I was fishing 5+ inch articulated streamers.
The new fly.
