Mercury Rising

Fishing large mouth bass by morning, dry fly fishing for wild trout by evening, running down lost fishing buddies by midnight.  It was a long day... however I still woke up by 5:30am for the morning hatch.


The plan was to backpack a short ways into the wild trout section of the Kern River.  Tuck and Joseph were to meet us on the river sometime in the evening.  Erika had some red and white lacey string to mark our campsite.  I told Tuck to stop when he finds lingerie string hanging from one of the trees.  By midnight, beams of light and muffled chatter rattled Erika awake.  A shoulder shove later, I was awake and disoriented.  We figured it was the guys and I scrabbled up the trail and began  running.  Nearly forty five minutes later our fishing party is finally united.  A few Sierra Nevada's and a few hours later our fishing adventure begins.


The first evening prior to meeting with Tuck and Joseph had phenomenal dry fly fishing.  I only fished about one hour that evening.  Between 7pm-8pm one of the largest Caddis hatches I have ever witnessed unfolded in front of me.  Countless trout were rising, tail whipping, jumping in a feeding frenzy.  My hands trembled as I couldn't seem to tie my knots fast enough.  A tan size 16 deer hair caddis tied on a TMC 2312 did the trick. 

With the epic hatch I had experienced the prior evening, I was expecting  legendary dry fly fishing all day.  By mid morning, yellow sallies, golden stone flies, caddis, sulphur duns were all buzzing around.  Yet.. not a single rise.  The air temp was already pushing into the high 80's.  By noon the temperature must have already hit 100 degrees F.  But lots of bugs.

Golden Stonefly

Yellow Sally

PMD

I abandoned the dry fly and setup a two nymph rig.  Large stonefly as the point fly with a yellow sally nymph as the trailing fly.  I gave Erika a primo piece of water and instantly we were rewarded with rapid fire takes.

Talon Scars

By 3pm the fishing died.  It was hot and we were tired.  We hiked a few miles back to camp and met up with Tuck and Joseph.  We all snoozed for a few hours to rest before the evening hatch.  I headed downriver with Erika while the guys went upriver.  The hatch wasn't as impressive as the night before, however we both got more than we could count.  I was most successful on a size 16 x-caddis.

We were entertained by hundreds of swirling caddis surrounding a Black Diamond Apollo light,  as the center piece of our night.