I fished my way upstream, using mostly Elk Hair Caddis (RIP Al Troth) and few EC Caddis thrown in. I found that I was missing quite a few fish on a size 12. They were hitting the fly, just not getting hooked, so I dropped down in size to a 16 or 18 and started hooking them regularly. The color did not seem to matter, tan, olive, black with a green butt, the fish seemed to like them all. In about three hours I caught and released 31 fish to 9".
I started walking back upstream tryring to find Jim and I ran into Bill. Aparrently Jim had leap-frogged Bill and was working his way upstream nymphing. Bill was working a grasshopper pattern in a deeper pool when I stumbled upon him. He said that he had landed 6 fish, and missed quite a few. When I mentioned the hook size he agreed that he had been using larger flies, so that might be why he was not hooking more fish.
After meeting up with Jim we headed back to the truck to eat lunch. Jim told me that he had landed 24 fish, mostly on a Prince nymph.
After lunch we decided to head up to Middle Creek, located between the Blue Lakes, and try our luck there. The flows had recently been increased to 15 CFS as well, but there seemed to be far fewer fish in the area we were fishing. Maybe it is due to the pressure from the nearby campgrounds. We gave up after about an hour and headed back down the hill. On the way we stopped and checked the flows in the West Carson, Red Lake Creek and then Woods Lake Creek to find that there was not much water in them at all.
We headed home and enjoyed a nice dinner. A nice day indeed!
