[VFB] Yestersay's Fishing Trip

[Jleavitt18]

Went fishing yesterday on Oak Creek in Northern Arizona, I live in Phoenix.  What a great day!!!  Fished near Cottonwood in the morning below the Page Springs Fish Hatchery.  They release some rainbows here, but not many this time of year as the water is too warm in the Creek.  So I was fishing for smallmouth bass.  In the first three hours I caught lots of fish, small ones, the largest being 8" and the smallest, well, you bass fisherman make flies that are lots bigger.  Then I happened onto a small pool running along a large fallen tree and tossed my fly into the lower end.  Bam!!! a nice strong strike and hookup, felt like by far the biggest fish of the morning.  Played him with my 3wt, but he tangled in the weeds and got off.  Looked to be about 12 to 14 inches.  Tossed my fly right back in there and caught another one.  Brought him to my feet and guess what, it was a rainbow.  Proceeded to catch and release 12 fish from that pool.  Tossing upstream into the pool produced rainbows and when they went down a downstream cast or one above the pool caught a bass, pretty neat.   Finally around 1:30 I got hungry so I tramped back to the truck and headed into Sedona for lunch then proceeded above town into the canyon.  If you do not know anything about Oak Creek Canyon, it is a major tourist attraction in Arizona.  There is a place on the creek called Slide Rock State Park.  An area with a slippery sandstone bottom where people swim and slide down the creek on the sandstone.  It was wall to wall people, you couldn't see the creek for the bodies!  Several Game and Fish officers have told me there are huge wild browns in the pools in this area, but no way could you toss a fly in there during the day so I parked my truck just above the slide area and hiked down into the canyon above a large pool which forms a barrier between the slide area and the upper creek.  The water running into this pool is pinched down into a narrow channel with a solid sandstone bottom and it was really gushing in there.  I tossed a hopper with a nymph dropper into the run and let it swim into the pool.  It was really moving so I just kept feeding out line until I was nearly to the backing on the reel and could hardly see the hopper.  Then Pow!!!, a big ole brown smacked the hopper, but I was so excited I missed him.  Damn was I mad I don't get too many chances like that.  Well, I pulled my line back and tried it again.  This time he took the nymph and I fought him all the way back up through the pool and to my hand.  A beautiful 18" brown, hope he or she produces lots more little browns next spring.  Well I caught 8 more browns in the afternoon and one more first for me.  A bat, like young James talked about a couple of weeks ago.  He went after my fly on the backcast and got tangled between the hopper and nymph.  Well, I just cast him right into the creek.  Funniest looking fly you ever did see.    Sorry to ramble on, but my wife tires of the stories.   Joe