Day #1
The conditions on the NFOW (North Fork Of the White) for the trip couldn't of been any better for us. I would like to think that this drought is trying to come to an end as we have been getting some nice rains this spring which has a lot of our rivers and creeks on the rise with some nice flows. When we woke up on Saturday morning, we walked out onto the deck of our riverside cabin at Sunburst Ranch to find the river flowing just a fuzz under 1000cfs. Primo conditions. We all got in late the night before so we had the normal routine of getting gear sorted in the boats and getting rods rigged up for the day. The objective for the day was simple....throw streamers till our shoulders were shot or our hands were bleeding. So the 8wts and sinking lines were strung up with big, nasty bugs attached to the end. Now, I have to be honest, we stuck the 5wts in my boat because we were floating the upper section of the NFOW which is more rainbow fishy than brown fishy so we were cheating just a little bit. Float plans were laid out for the day and shuttles were set up. Time to quit screwing around, it's go time...
We departed from our home base at Sunburst, The Professor, Billiam, and DonnyB went south to put in at Patrick Bridge for their 1st of 2 floats for the day while JoeyC, Cole, and myself went north for the Kelly access to put in for our float. We were gonna run the gauntlet to fish damn near all the Blue Ribbon and Red Ribbon trout water on the NFOW, which is just short of a 14 mile float. That's legit.
We dropped the WolfSkiff into the river and the guys grabbed the streamer rods to go to work on hopefully dredging up a Unicorn. Just a little side note here, when we put in there was a couple of fisherman that floated by on pontoons and made sure to get downstream of us. Sure whatever, didn't bother us to fish behind them...for the time being. Remember this little piece of info for later. Anyways, the boys went to work on slinging half a chicken to the banks and bringing them back to the boat in every conceived way that you could possibly strip a streamer. We hit some good banks for a while but wasn't getting any love from the streamer bug. On top of that, the sun was out high and bright which doesn't typically make for good streamer conditions. Joey was the 1st one to bite the bullet and dig the bobber stick out and start fishing the fishy seams as we made our way down to the 1st "landmark" of the float, McKee Bridge.
Now, if you haven't floated the NFOW before, there are 2 low-water bridges that cross the river and can become a pain in the posterior if the flows are high on the river. Everyone has their magic number as far as CFS goes on if they can get their boat under these bridges. I was well within my comfort zone on my Clacka so we made a quick pit stop to set up cameras to get some footage of us going under the bridge. After setting up, we jumped back in the boat and made our run under the bridge. Its still a "think skinny" kinda ordeal as we all had to lay down in the boat but it was no problem. We beached the boat and made our way back to the bridge to retrieve our camera gear when we saw a drifter coming down. Not any drifter either, a big ol' aluminum Hyde high side drifter with Dan Forget at the sticks. Hmmm, this could get interesting. As he made his approach, he made the comment that he had measured wrong and wasn't gonna fit under the bridge. Indeed sir. CTD to the rescue.
I apologize for the crappy pictures here. Took them with my
iPhone from the footage of us going under the bridges.
Anyways, we got under McKee Bridge without any major issues, got some good footage, and helped a buddy out. Mission accomplished! Time to fish. The guys were back to throwing streamers again, hard to pass up some of the sexy banks that this river has to offer. We floated downstream with a few tugs here and there but couldn't stick a hook in a fish face yet. This time, both Cole and JoeyC put the big sticks down in exchange for the bobber rods. Now, remember the guys in the pontoons I was telling you about? Well we finally caught up to them just above The Falls as they were posted up in a run. Ok. No big deal. Give them plenty of room and we will go around them. Nope...soon as they seen us, they hoped into the pontoons and pushed downstream to stay out in front of us. Pricks. Anyways, back to fishing. We did some swapping around on the sticks and I got my turn at the front of the boat. Due to the section we were in, I went straight for the bobber rod and wanted to get some fish in the boat as the section we were in is usually really good for dredging a nymph of some sort. It didn't take long and we started picking up a few rainbows here and there. No big ones but just your normal NFOW wild rainbows. The stank was finally off the boat....
We kept pushing downstream, going back and forth from the bobber rigs to back to the streamer rods in certain sections. Still no love on the big bug. Hmmm. We stopped here and there to nymph out some good runs and do some filming. Nothing too exciting. Just a few wild rainbows again. As we started to approach Blair Bridge, what did we find? Its our friends in the pontoons again. At this point, the language coming from my pie-hole was far from G-Rated as I was a touch aggravated with these guys. So, I tucked the boat into the inside bank where they couldn't totally see us coming : ) As luck would have it, when we got to them, one of them hooked up with a fish and they couldn't bail off in their pontoons to push downstream ahead of us. Ahhh, the sweet smell of Karma. Yes, I'm a prick sometimes. Do I care? Nope.
This was also about the time that my phone started going crazy as we musta hit a spot of service on the river. I dug into the boat bag to fetch my phone and found a few text messages from Billiam. Questions of whether or not they could get under McKee Bridge was the 1st order of business followed by a few pictures of some browns that were caught in the lower section. Plus a bonus fish with DonnyB putting a smallie in the boat as well. Indeed. The whole crew is on fish...
We made our way downstream and the guys were back to throwing the big bugs again. Good streamer water can't be wasted with a piddly 5wts, 5X, and eggs....half a chicken is the only way to go! Another positive was the sun had finally sunk back behind the hills and put a nice dark shadow on the right bank for us to cast to. It got hot for a little while for us on the streamer bug. JoeyC had a legit 2-footer follow his Double Deceiver to the boat but wouldn't commit to eat and also had a couple of eats from other fish but couldn't make the hook stick! Cole finally put us on the board with streamers by sticking a nice chubby brown. Beautiful fish. He followed that up shortly with a smaller stocker brown that also was digging the streamer bug. We missed a few more fish but then things got quiet on us again and we hit a pretty long section of frog water. We pushed on downstream to make up some time as it was getting late and there was some good fishy water in the lower section I wanted to fish hard with streamers before it got dark.
Just above Patrick Bridge, we floated through the section known as Trout Island which is a super fishy, pocket water kinda place that is packed full of fish. The guys decided to dig the 5wts back out and chuck a bobber before we got below Patrick Bridge. Cole immediately hooked up with a decent brown. At this point, I'm fumbling around trying to get the camera out to film and at some point I had unknowingly put my foot on the anchor release which in turn dropped the anchor. Not that big of a deal except the fish took a run upstream on us and decided to get tangled in the anchor rope. FML. This was quite the debacle for a few minutes as we tried to get the fish out. I resorted to lifting the anchor up till we could see the fish and JoeyC tried to put him in the net. Epic fail. The fish finally broke off. Gotta love it when the guy on the sticks has LOFT (Lack Of F*cking Talent) issues. Well, after the appropriate amount of crap was given to me for that head in rectum moment, we pushed on....
We switched back to the streamer rods for the rest of the float and just hammered all the good banks. There is some super sweet streamer water in the lower sections on this river. It just screams big brown trout and big nasty streamers. Well, for today, the bite was so-so. We put a few stocker browns in the boat and I continued having LOFT issues as I missed or lost several browns on the streamer bug. By several, I mean like....10-12 fish? It was stupid. Amateur hour the whole way down to the take out for me. The only high point for me was I caught a smallmouth just above the take out. Very cool. We got our 1st smallies of the year and we weren't even smallie fishing. Indeed.
We finally arrived at the take-out just before dark to end a pretty damn good day. We got to fish some awesome water and put some fish in the boat. Not too shabby. We got the boat loaded up and our gear stowed away as we knew the other guys were waiting on us. Hunger had set in and they were all starving cuz supposedly I didn't allow time to stop to get some deli meat or anything to have in the boat for lunch and made the guys live off of beer, muffins, and granola for the day. BS if you ask me. I wasn't even that hungry. Anyways, we hauled butt back to the cabin and met up with the rest of the crew. The normal round of "Whatcha catch?" "Any big fish?" "Yeah, it sucked and we ran outta beer." was covered on the porch as everyone got out of their waders and got ready to head into town.
We piled into the Billiam's Hondoo Doo Pilot, turned on the kiddie DVDs for those of us in the back, and headed for a little hole in the wall burger joint I had heard about from Sean from OKC and Justin at Sunburst called The Three Legged Mule. Yes, you heard me. The Three Legged Mule. Now this is the kinda local eatery that when you walk in, all the locals give you the stink eye because you're taking up space in their place. Well, funny looks aside, the food was pretty damn good. We all got some burger called "The Alaskan Burger". I will just let the picture speak for itself...
With our bellies full, we headed back to the cabin to go lay down into a food induced coma for the night in preparation for tomorrow. Forecast was for overcast skies and chances of rain for the whole day on Sunday. Hopes were high for a good streamer bite. After we all sorted our gear out and re-rigged a few things, we climbed into our sleeping bags and crashed out. Well all of us except The Professor, the ol' fart passed out in the chair next to the wood stove. We had to wake him up and send him to bed...
Stay tuned for Day #2...
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