August weather ended up being pretty close to the long-term averages, but the fishing far exceeded the norm! I spent time on the water either seeking new spots or fine-tuning my approach on flowing water I'd fished before. A good gauge of how much action and scenery there was is how many pics I'd saved by month's end. Most months, it's around 25 pics, but August provided closer to 60.
During the first couple weeks, I had the pleasure of fishing a few brooks with "Caught The Fever" from this Forum. This was small water fishing that was made even smaller by extremely low flows. This was Mike's first time fishing this way. He mastered the required stealth right out of the gate and came up with several natives in the very difficult conditions.
What these fish lacked in size, they made up for in heart and color.
At other times during the month, there was enough rain to bump up flows at least briefly. I took advantage of this to aim for a little "hat trickery". Brookies were fairly easy to achieve, rainbows a close second, with browns being the unicorn of the three. In the waters I fished, it is rarely possible to sit in one spot and score a hat trick. I started most outings fishing the highest ground for natives. All were bright, and some had a little brawn to go with it.
Those fish hanging out rock ledges took on lighter colors to match their background.
It paid big dividends to hike or climb in a bit from more heavily fished access points. This spot didn't have a beaten path to it and gave up nearly a dozen fish.
After mornings playing with the brookies, I usually descended to seek rainbows and a rare brown or 2. These wild rainbows are acrobats and far from shy about taking a surface fly.
If everything lined up right, I was treated to a brown to complete the high ground hat trick. The browns rarely jumped, but used the current for some solid bull-dogging on the 3-weight.
At 14", this brown was clearly the master of his small pool
While an EHC or Parachute Adams fished well alone, a small emerger as a trailer often enhanced my chances.
On one memorable evening, I picked up a half dozen rainbows out of a single run on a Partridge and Orange trailer. Dead drifting was the name of the game, with many of the takes being subtle and barely submerging the EHC "strike indicator". The EHC just missed the tail of this 'bow when he grabbed the trailing emerger.
And later, I had a double header of 1 'bow on each fly. It would have been a personal 1st to land both, but with all hell breaking loose, I was happy to keep my flies and land 1.
More traditional hook-ups followed.
A recurring theme was long stretches of great looking water with slow action, with the occasional pay dirt pool. It made foot power worthwhile. After a half mile or more of stream walking with little to show for it except exercise, this run yielded 9 fish in short order.
By mid-month, the days had definitely shortened and cooled some. The daily variation of water temps lessened and even on bright and warm days, the stream thermometer topped out in the mid-60s. Fine for Foothills browns.
For an outing or 2, I had to weed through non-salmonids, including dozens of sunnies which grabbed trout patterns.
But with signs of Fall advancing, the holdover browns soon dominated and took on fine, buttery colors. It's always encouraging to find these fish that have a made it through a summer, or in some cases more.
I pray for those in Dorian's path, but even without him here (yet anyway) September appears to be off to a wet start. Maybe they'll be some early lake run fish?
