River Fishing by The Skin of My Teeth

When I arrived at the river and looked down over the bank I wondered if the river was cross-able.  It

looked as if it was going to be close, so I walked the couple of hundred feet it took to get alongside the river so that I could investigate.  Sure the river was high, but the water was still fairly clear, so the trout should be biting, I thought to myself.  As I took a couple of steps into the current I realized that the water was deeper than I had anticipated.  I stood there for a second looking the hundred or so feet to the other side and realized that it probably wasn't worth the chance.

I mean, sure it was a beautiful day with temperatures in the high sixties, but I really had no interest in taking a wet and wild ride downstream, so I decided to stay on the west side of the river on this day.  With temperatures this warm and foretasted to be this warm for the next few days, I knew that this was probably it for river fishing until August or so, so I began to work my way downstream.  With the heavy current, the drift fishing was difficult, but I could see a boulder fifty or so yards downstream, that would give me a good vantage point to fish what I knew top be a productive hole.

From on top of the boulder, it was as I thought and I had a good view of the deep, only slightly stained water that was swirling around two large underwater boulders.  This is a hole that I preferred to fish from the other side of the river, but from the boulder, I figured that I could still get a fairly good drift.  I was correct and within 10 casts had my first bump from an inquisitive trout at the end of the drift.   I missed the trout, but things were looking good.  On the next cast, the trout hit again, and I set the hook.

Almost immediately the fish came off (this is what I refer to as "jagging" the fish) and I reeled in and continued to fish.  Normally when I "jag" a trout it will bite again, as this doesn't seem to upset them very much, and within three more casts I had the trout hooked.  It was a heavy rainbow (I know this because I always wear quality polarized glasses and I saw the trout "flash") and I was wondering why in the heck the trout didn't "take off" as spring rainbows tend to do.  Just as I was thinking this the weight was gone and so was the trout.  From what I saw and the weight that I felt, the rainbow was at least twenty inches and probably more like twenty two or twenty three. 

I continued fishing for another thirty minutes or so without another bite and as I was walking up the embankment back to my vehicle (I had to leave to pick my daughter up from school), I looked back down at the river.  Yep, it was a good afternoon even though no trout were landed, but with the beautiful weather and borderline hot temperatures I could all but feel the snow melting off of those beautiful mountains in the background.  It's no doubt a good thing that I got a little river fishing in (by the skin of my teeth by the way) because this and all of the area rivers are going to be un-fishable for the next 3-4 months due snow runoff.