7/4 and 7/6 Report

It’s been pretty quiet on this thread, so I thought I’d give some info on two recent outings.

July 4: I met up with a friend from Wisconsin and fished in Fillmore and Houston Co. We fished from about 8:30-noon and ran into a grand total of zero anglers. The fishing wasn’t great as there were no hatches and the fish weren’t really keying on one fly in particular, so I ended up changing often. Patterns that worked that day included a basic scud, Black Wet Fly, cdc emerger, cream caddis dry, and a small rubber legged stimie pattern (hopefully tied to resemble a small hopper) which actually produced the nicest fish of the day, a healthy 14″ brown. I saw as many hoppers that day as I saw other anglers – none.

We trucked on over to our last spot, a small, clear, gem of a spring creek that is often fished int eh winter and early spring. After fishing it for an hour, I know why there are few anglers on it in the summer – weeds overhanging on the water made it literally impossible to cast. Throw in gin clear water, and the trout were tough. I only managed one, but with little room to cast, I was satisfied.

I went out yesterday with a friend hoping to find some tricos in the AM hours, but it’s still a little early for that hatch to get going – 10 days for sure in the southern reaches. The water was overly clear and a little low in my opinion, so we could use some rain for sure. We ran into several chunky trout, but nothing to brag about. A variety of patterns worked at times like the Black Wet Fly, basic PT’s, parachute ants, small cdc emergers, and some basic cream caddis dries.

This time of year is a favorite of mine for several reasons. There really aren’t that many people on area streams, especially during the weekdays, the trico and terrestrial action starts to get going, and if you have the ability to bushwhack a bit, you can run into trout that haven’t been pressured much in the last six weeks .

Take care all,
D.A.

Wow, some really nice looking fish.

Wow, is it just me or does the brown in that first picture really have a noticable lack of spots?

anywho…….I fished a local Winona county streams over the weekend (wanted to stay away from the river ) and had about the same luck. Couldn’t buy a fish on the fly rod, but I did get two on spinners (one maybe 13″ and one small one).

I had never fished this particular stream before so I was really exploring for new spots. The fish were all holding in certain deeper holes (which really weren’t all that deep as it was pretty small water).

and like Dave said, I didn’t even find evidence that there had been another fisherman in the area recently (no foot prints or anything).

Might as well add my 2 cents here.I too have noticed the lack of posts and have been going to contribute but,like you guys…not much worth mentioning.I did fish a couple of Goodhue county streams recently.I haven’t fished either one of them for a few years and what I encountered on them covered emotions from joy to anger.On the first stream that I fished,the first thing I saw was what was left after an act of vandalism on some private property that borders this stream.It’s no wonder it can be so tough to get permission to fish or hunt private property.The fishing was slow and the number of fish seen was not what I remenbered from years before however,I did catch a nice 18″ to 20″ fish and a couple of smaller fish that saved the day.On stream #2,I quickly remembered why I don’t fish this particular stream very often…long stretches of poor fishing water between fishable water.This is a shame on this particular creek because it once was a very good trout stream…and still is in places but,it has filled in with sand in so many places that used to be nice pools.It could use some major rehab.Gin clear water here kept the fish wary and they became quickly educated to my spinning presentations.Final tally here was,saw several fish,had two on…caught 0.I didn’t see another angler at either stream.
Mike

That first one looks like a brook trout.

It certainly is dark enough to be a brookie, but there are no signature “worm” like markings on its back. That’s the cool thing about trout fishing versus many other types of angling is that the trout all have a tendency to look very different. This one just happens to not have many spots.

Take care,
D.A.