After trying to fish the
slim cover waters of Walker County Lake last week I wanted to fish some crystal clear waters
this past Thursday. The Sipsey Tailrace was just the ticket, to rid me of the
horror I experienced last week, while trying to bluegill fish on Walker Lake .
Fishermen always have a
plan in place when venturing out on the water, and my plan today was to get on
the water by mid afternoon and hopefully experience some type of hatch. In fact
I was so confident of some sort of hatch; I didn’t even rig my fly rod until I
actually got to the waters edge. As I approached the fast water at access four
I notice a few midges here and there but nothing significant enough for me to
tie on a dry. So I started with a soft hackle, because a few trout were feeding
just below the surface. A soft hackle usually will generate a take if the drift
is near perfection when the subsurface activity is happening. I stayed with the
perfection drift soft hackle for a while with no results; so plan B was put
into play, which was dead drifting a nymph. I hoped I could land some quality rainbow
on the swing part of the drift. This same technique has produced some of my best
rainbows this season on the tailrace.
The dead drift yielded this rainbow on the
swing. This technique places less emphasis on mending and more emphasis on
feel.
While viewing this
rainbow, I imagined seeing these spots on the backs of future browns that may
be stocked one day in the Sipsey.
The last rainbow of the
afternoon was taken using a copper john dropped under an indicator. A few
minutes after landing this trout the generators came on and cut short what
looked to be an even more promising afternoon.