West Branch at Walton

I left O-town before sun-up to get to Walton and on the water by 6AM.  I'm not usually a morning person, but this week's looking a little busy and I have to take the opportunities when they present themselves.  Checking the flow rates on the USGS site, levels are still high at around 500 CFS, but they're dropping fast and I was eager to get back on flowing water.

When I arrived at the river to scope out the situation, the day was beautiful, but the water was still fairly silty and there was no insect activity that I could discern.  I decided to give the hopper n' dropper rig a go and tied on a #12 parachute hopper on a 4x tippet and then a #16 pheasant tail nymph 18" below that.  The hopper makes a great strike indicator for your nymph, and while I know it's probably a bit early to fish hoppers, I noticed a few smallish grasshoppers yesterday while mowing the lawn so I figured we're not too far off.  At any rate, the trout weren't interested, though I murdered the river chub population, easily catching 15-20 of the silvery little guys, mostly on the nymph but on the hopper as well.  The only trout I saw was a rather large brown that was hanging out within a foot of the bank.  Unfortunately, he saw me before I saw him and he took off for deep water.

Throughout the morning, the few decent rises I saw were all close to the bank.  I can't be sure they were trout with black bass and carp in these waters, but the one I spooked certainly suggests the possibility.  I've read that larger trout will hold close to the bank when the water is high.

After a little while, I adjusted my nymph rig out to around 30" to get it a bit lower, but had similar luck.  Next up I switched to a muddler minnow hoping it would entice a strike in the murky water.  Again, no luck, though at one point it raised a 3' monster of a carp from the murky water about 3 feet from where I was standing.  Let me tell you, that got my heart hammering!  I could have stuck my foot out and kicked him and I had no idea he was there.

As a last ditch, I switched to a hot spot ant, though by this point the sun was fully on the water and heating things up.  Other than the occasional chub, nobody was interested so I contented myself with a beautiful morning on the water and packed up my things just as the first of the spinning fishermen arrived to try their luck on the bass population.