Smith River 28-29 Apr 12

This will be a little late but did want to report that even though the Smith River flows have been messed up for the past couple months the river is fishing well when you can get on it. Many of you know the folks a Philpott have been doing maintenance and have not done any generation - but the dam can only hold so much water, therefore when it rains they have been releasing it. Most days the flow has been +350cfs which is a little strong for comfortable wading. On occasion it has exceeded 900cfs which blows out the entire fishery. All of that is coming to an end this week. They are still tweaking the repairs but you can expect things to be back to normal very soon. As always check current conditions by calling 276629-2432.

All has not been lost. One bright spot is that DGIF has been stocking rainbow trout on a regular basis and the "follow the stock truck" crowd have been frustrated as well. The strong flows have helped distribute the fish throughout the river. I fished a spot last Saturday well downstream of a bridge. That meant I had to hike a good distance, something many of the folks used to easy pickings are not prone to do, and found good fishing. The water was about a foot higher then normal and it had a good flow to it but it was wadeable. You just would not want to do it all day, because it would soon tire you out.



Second cast as I was straightening out my line produced this nice rainbow. Things were looking up!



Every third or fourth cast produced another fish. Thanks to recent river flow conditions these fish were a long way from where they had been dumped off a bridge. I probably don't need to tell you I think this is a sorry method of stocking when you merely drive to a bridge, net a few fish out of the tank and toss them over. I have even seen times when they have connected a chute to the tank and flushed them over the side. Not a good method at all. There has to be a better way and some of us have contacted DGIF with suggestions. Look for more suggestions from me in the very near future.


They just kept coming and coming. You're wondering what they were hitting on - well it was not the Allieworm. I did catch one on the AW and one on a Stimulator which I was using as a strike indicator but the vast majority fell to a #16 Zebra Midge.



Awwww, reality strikes. I caught a couple 6 inch Smith River Browns. Pretty fish, but with the limited food supply they were about 4-5 years old whereas the stocked rainbow were probably less then 2 years old. Something wrong with that picture. All in all a a very good outing. I was on the water less then an hour and caught my goal of double digits - lucky I guess. The lucky part was the messed up flows have distributed the stocked fish well away from the bridges, otherwise they would have been caught the same day they were placed in the river.



The following day I tried for some bigger browns in the lower river. The water was moving right along there as well, which limited where you could fish. First catch of the day was this shiner which thought "if it could only swallow that large fly it would not have to eat again for a week".




Big catch of the day was a photo of this lovely lady. Anyone know who this is?




Yep, it's Damsel Fly, aka Lauri. Rumors that she had eloped with the drummer from a rock band are not true . Great fishing with ya Lauri - let's not wait another three years before we do it again.