It wasn't meant to be, but I had a beautiful evening with the stream entirely to myself for most of it. There was too much runoff from an earlier downpour at the Shinhopple bridge, so I headed up stream to a public fishing access between Shinhopple and Downsville. The water was very cold, very clear, and covered in a thick mist after the rains. Peaceful and beautiful.
I didn't see any surface activity, and my prospecting skills are quite lacking at the moment so I didn't have much luck. I tried swing a muddler minnow for a while, then switched to hi-vis hopper with a #18 sulfur tied on the bend about 18" off of that (I couldn't see the sulfur in the mist). Finally, I switched the sulfur for a Prince nymph but got nary a nibble. Absent rises, I really don't have a good strategy for finding fish.
At one point, toward the end of my evening when I was doubting the presence of any fish in that damn river, a 20"+ rainbow drifted downstream to within a foot of my waders, held there for a solid half minute, and then casually drifted off downstream. It was pretty amazing. He didn't seem to care I was there at all. He was so close I could see a large white mark on his snout and another on his dorsal fin (scars, maybe?). And then, as I was leaving, a guy showed up in flip flops and a ripped t-shirt, casted out a panther martin on his spinning rod, and hooked another huge rainbow on his second cast. I admit, it was some consolation to me when it broke his line and took off.
