Today is the Summer Solstice – the longest day of the year in the Northern latitudes. This day also marks the official first day of summer. Starting today, the days will start to get shorter as we slowly head back towards winter. I decided to celebrate the solstice by hitting the water very early this morning.
Although flows are still a tad high on the East Carson, I decided to fish the section of river that is literally minutes from my doorstep. There was also a rumor floating around yesterday that NDOW had planted a few thousand fish in the river at the old boat launch above the dam. The same rumor also stated that NDOW was going to plant a few thousand more fish below the dam next week.
I arrived and the river and was ready to fish by 6:00am. Pretty early in the morning, but the sun was up and hidden behind an overcast cloud layer and it was already warm. There was no wind so to speak. My initial rig was a #12 caddis fly with a #16 soft-hackle Hare’s Ear dropper. I started to fish right at the boat launch, but was finding that the water was a little too fast for effective dry fly fishing. No worries as there is plenty of softer water upstream.
A quick wade upstream against some pretty tough currents and I was in a perfect position to fish some better water with my flies. I should mention that there were some bugs on the water, mostly real small size #20 bugs. They could have been Blue Winged Olives (it was cloudy), but my guess was that they were midges. I started by casting the flies tight to the near bank to clear the water. I was rewarded with a small “Catch-able Size Trout” in the 6″ size range. A few more drifts and a few more small trout. It was time to fish the water further out. There was now evidence of rising fish mostly where the faster water met the soft water. A few more casts to these seams, but the drifts were tougher than they looked because I had to cast OVER the fast water near me, then OVER the slack water in the center, to the seam at the far end. I moved positions several times, but just could not get an optimal drift.
At this point, it was now 7:45am, so I headed back to the car and called it a morning. I used the same two flies all morning, and caught all my trout on the caddis dry. I love dry fly season!