A fine small stream afternoon.

[cbtrtbum]

A few weeks ago, I fished a favorite small stream for the first time in about 6 years. Sneaking along a small stream, picking each little seam, run, pool, grassy bank....One of my favorite types of angling. After having a fantastic afternoon, then getting on here (also for the first time in forever) and enjoying some of the fine posts/photo documentaries I thought I would too contribute in an attempted photo documentary of the time I spent on the same stream, this afternoon. The photos did not come out as great as I had intended but they are still ok. Enjoy.





This stream, like many other small streams, is a tributary to a significantly more well known river. 2 side roads off of the heavily traveled main road lands you at the trail head of a wilderness area. A relatively easy hike in gets you streamside in about 15 minutes. Then you have the choice of going either up or down. There is a hiking trail bordering the majority of the stream, but it is mainly used with hikers and those riding horses. The trout are all relatively small and are all wild. I really dont come across to many other anglers down here.




I hiked about 10 minutes up the trail and began near where I had left off a few weeks ago. The stream was in beautiful shape and there was a sporadic hatch of various bugs (PMD's, Yellow Sallies, Red Quill, a few hoppers and caddis) I arrived a little earlier than I had intended and there was still a bunch of sun on the water. I saw quite a few hoppers on my hike in and so started off with a small henry's fork hopper (my favorite small stream hopper)




While I enjoy many types of angling, a small cane rod and a silk line are my favorite tools to enjoy an afternoon of small stream angling. I foolishly used to carry all of my fly boxes with me. Now I carry one box and it is plenty.






The angling was fantastic. I landed about a half dozen small brookies and the only brown of the day on the hopper. Then I switched over to a #18 pmd sparkle dun. Yes, I probably could have done well on a royal wulff, humpy, etc. Thing is, when I fish attractor dries on this stream I do get fish but not as often as if I fish a small sparkle dun. On the SD they just crush it pool after pool. The fly rebounds extremely well with a few brushes of frogs fanny (if you are not using this for your small stream dries you are doing yourself a disservice IMO.-no connection to the company just love the floatant!) and in general sparkle duns are pretty easy to see on the water. Absolutely one of my favorite drys. I then went on to just enjoy going upstream, picking all of the little different holding spots. Landed lots of brookies, and a handful of beautiful rainbows. The stream doesnt have many browns in it and even fewer cutthroats. I was fortunate to land the grand slam today as one brown and one cutt each came to hand. I photographed one of each trout. Something was wrong health wise with the cutt as its shape was a little weird.

[cbtrtbum]

Sorry for the small attachments. Still figuring out posting them here. If you click on them they enlarge.

[ksbioteacher]

Thanks for the report cbtrtbum. You've convinced me that I should start carrying some Sparkle Duns.

BW

[ksbioteacher]

btw, since you refer to small attachments I thought you might like to know that I don't "attach" images. I simply load up images to Flickr and link to them in the report. By doing that I control the size of the image. My images remain off site. It requires an extra step of uploading images to Flickr (or other photosharing sites) I post images that are 800 dpi in width since most monitors handle that easily today. One disadvantage would be if Flickr is down then the images don't show and anyone opening one of my reports is accessing both smallstreams and flickr so there could be some slow down on the load time. Overall, for me, I think the advantages of larger images makes up for the disadvantages. The larger images aren't necessary to tell the story however, I certainly enjoyed your report

[gusstrand]

Very cool report!

FWIW, I just posted a thread in the announcements area with some photo posting help.

-G

[Lone Wulff]

Great report - sounds like you had a fun day. I agree with you on the Frog's Fanny. I'd be lost without it.

[ofuros]

Fine post cbtrtbum. Good to see you caught up with a favourite stream, after 6 long years. Nice rewards too......