June sure was a month to play your best with the hand you were dealt. It wasn't a normal month, but with some bobbing and weaving, there was some decent action and more than a few surprises along the way.
Early on, flows were dropping, but nothing too out of the ordinary for the most part. My first adventure of the month was on a bigger, well-known trout and salmon river. It's a beautiful spot.
I've done well here, but not with much consistency. After netting a smallish brookie in the first few casts, I thought I was off the races. My quick start didn't hold up and all the flies and lures I could chuck sparked no interest. I hiked a ways downstream in the late afternoon and found an inviting mid-stream rock with a nice current break. The mayfly hatches I'd hoped for finally started. They were sparse, but enough to bring up a few sippers. A decent drift with a Light Cahill was well-received and it was game on, just not game I expected. No salmon or brookie, but instead a 21" smallie. Probably could have snacked on the reel I use on my 5-weight.
Quite the brawl and a PB dry fly smallie. It was not a fluke, as I rang up 6 more smallies in the 18-20" range on the dries. Amazing how light they sipped on top, followed by hooksets that were met with a brick wall.
For the next outing, I set my sights on several normally reliable tailwaters, but it's hard to do much when "flows" look like this.
The good news is that I could hoof it a long way to find enough water that was still cool for a few holdovers.
I like small water and still hadn't given up on it even as the dry spell wore on. On one outing, I traced a river all the way from its high altitude origin to its confluence with a major river. Up high, I got to practice my marksmanship in tight quarters. I found that sidearm casts while laying on my side worked best. Everything beneath this leafy canopy appears green
I followed the river down to its mid reaches. The water looked great, but the action was slow. I managed to get a few rises that led to a few browns on the 3-weight. There were also some decent wildlife sightings, including duck families and rosy maple moths. The 2nd mallard group was having quite a go of it in a swift stretch.....tough neighborhood to raise a family!
I followed that up with a trip to a small unstocked water that flows through a park in an almost urban setting. Chubs and fallfish are the standard, but a few natives persist in stretches that are tight and buggy enough to discourage the typical day visitor. In some of the darker spots, the brookies are almost black! I had bullfrogs providing background music in a couple stretches
.
But by June 21st or so, 11 of the watersheds I fish had set or come close to setting record low flows for the date. It was interesting that many of the records being being beaten or challenged only date back to 2016-2018
Time to set my sights elsewhere. A trip to the salt provided some decent light tackle jigging, but also a striper that muscled in on the action and made short work of 6 LB. test on the barnacles and kelp!
And 1 local quarry was jammed packed with smallies that are virtually all cookie cutters in the 7-11" range. Not bad on a light flyrod. The fish also have an interesting yellow color. To stand at the quarry edge and look down is almost dizzying. I've sounded it through the ice and it drops to 70 feet within about 10 feet of the bank.
With this feast or famine weather pattern, we switched to monsoons to close out the month, Some of the waters that had just set record low flows were now setting record HIGH flows! Strangely, some of the old records being broken only dated back to 2017 or so. The river blowouts, made it a perfect time to hit the slop in the warm water ponds to close out the month. This pond has an ace up its sleeve with a cold water trickle hidden in the woods at one corner. I've seen a small native or 2 here on occasion.
I'd like to see a return to fishing normalcy in July, but adapting to whatever Ma Nature throws along is its own reward.
