I was able to sneak break away for an hour after work and hit the West Carson for an hour. My wife and daughter came along for the ride. Knowing that I was going to have to maximize the fishing with minimal movement and wading, I chose to hit up the Gauging station section. You have this section of rivers two best holes within sight of the gauge itself and there is a nice “beach” area as well.
The weather was perfect, about 80 degrees, and no clouds or rain. Water temps are warming and levels are almost all the way down to pre-runoff levels. The bonus was that even though I took some drastic anti-mosquito tactics (wore waders and slathered on the juice), that proved unwarranted as the pests were non-existent this evening.
There was good bug activity on the surface, so I decided to start off the evening with a Royal Trude, my searching dry of choice on this river. I was not dissapointed with this selection. Almost immediately I was into a small fish. He was able to shake off, but a few drifts later and I am release the first of several fish of the evening. One tactic that works very well on the lower hole is to present your dry fly with a downstream presentation. The upshot to that method of presenting the fly is the difficulty in setting the hook when you have 60 feet of line on the water all downstream of you. Practice makes perfect!
Since a picture speaks a thousand words I am going to end this post with several pictures that my wife took throughout the hour that we fished.
