Just got back from the St. Joe after a great day of fishing. Well it ended
as a great day of fishing. Things started kind of rough: Forget my wading
boots, various tangles and other acts belittling my 25 years of fly fishing
experience. Guess days like this are designed to keep us humble. Anyway, on
to the fishing report.
The water is a lot lower this week then it was over Memorial Day. As a
result, the river is fairly easy to wade and the fish are starting to look up
and are taking dry's in better numbers. You still are getting mostly 6-12
inchers pounding the dry's but I did take a couple in the 14 inch range and
had one over 18 inches come within an inch of taking my Stimulator. I missed
several other fish because I couldn't get my timing down. All but a couple
of these fish casually came to the fly today. I could see them move several
seconds before they actually took the fly and found myself constantly too
early or too late.
The highlight of the day came at the very end. I found a beautiful hole that
made a big sweeping S turn. My first cast produced the follow by the big
fish mentioned above. Next cast resulted in a miss by one in the 14+ range.
I got a couple smaller ones and decided it was time to go deep. I could see
several large fish down towards the bottom of the hole. I tied on a caddis
nymph and the second cast resulted in a fat and fiesty 18 incher that really
put up a great fight on my 3 wt. He was beautifully marked and really a joy
to catch.
All of my fishing this trip occured from Avery to Gold Creek. The hot fly
was an orange Stimulator and the trusty PMD also produced good numbers today.
The Stimulator definetly got the larger fish moving though where as the PMD
tended to draw smaller fish. I brought over a dozen fish to hand and missed
at least that many more so the a big improvement over the 5 fish taken on the
last trip.
Mike Wilson
