Upper Taylor River – 8/7/2011

Time: 10:30AM – 3:00PM

Location: Upstream and downstream from campground

Fish Landed: 1

Upper Taylor River 08/07/2011 Photo Album

The water near the campground looked just as attractive as the water I’d driven to on Saturday, so I decided to fish from camp. Jane and I had tasty oatmeal for breakfast, and after cleaning up, I headed upstream beyond the edge of the campground. I began fishing with a Chernobyl ant, but received numerous refusals. Next I elected to tie on a size 12 lime green trude. This brought a look or two, but no fish. The third fly was a royal stimulator, but again no interest. The last fly I tried before reverting to the tried and true Letort hopper was a size 16 olive body deer hair caddis which brought no action.

Typical Taylor Park Scene

I finally buckled to common sense and tied on the yellow Letort hopper. I added a BHPT and began catching some fish, but I was covering a lot more water between catches than had been the case on Saturday. By noon I’d landed three browns, two were around 12 inches and that seemed to be the upper end for this water. One nice brown grabbed the BHPT, and the other two hammered the hopper. Just before exiting for lunch I noticed another fisherman had driven back a rough dirt lane from the main road and was fishing above me. This cut me off from further progress, so I elected to return for lunch and then walk downstream for my afternoon fishing.

When I returned to camp, Jane had taken down the tent and was reading. I made a quick lunch while the food was still out, and then walked down the lane to fish downstream. I ran into the campground host who told me the folks that reserved 13 were early and waiting in site 10 for us to leave. When I said my wife was still there and planned to be out by 1PM, he said that is fine as check out time is 1PM. I later learned that Jane drove to another unoccupied shady campsite to read and wait for me to finish fishing.

I walked down the dirt ATV lane and crossed a pedestrian bridge to the other side and then continued downstream another 100 yards are so. I entered the water and fished hard for the next 2.5 hours back upstream until I ended at 3PM and saw Jane waiting by the car. There was a flurry of action from 1-2 when I caught five fish, a couple of which were in the twelve inch range. But after 2PM things slowed considerably as it was quite warm with sunny blue skies and I covered quite a bit of river and netted three more browns to bring my total to 11. I observed a fair number of caddis, but only one or two rises over the course of the day. I added a beadhead RS2 in the last hour and caught one or two on the small gray fly. I noticed a handful of small BWO –like mayflies, and that is what prompted me to try the RS2.

Near Beginning of Sunday Fishing