Time: 10:30AM – 4:00PM

Location: National forest land

Cascade Creek 08/19/2024 Photo Album

Note: In order to protect small high country streams, I have chosen to change the name for a few. This particular creek happens to be one of them. Excessive exposure could lead to crowding and lower fish densities.

Early Fish

If you had asked me at 2PM for my assessment of this creek, I would have said meh. Between 2PM and 4PM my opinion changed dramatically. I am getting ahead of myself.

Surprised by This Brook Trout

Several weeks ago my wife, Jane, and I completed an eight mile out and back hike along this mountain stream. The water was gorgeous, but I never spotted a fish. I was very intrigued to give it a trial, so that brings me to Monday, August 19, 2024. I arrived at the trailhead parking lot at 9:30, and I chose my Sage R8 four weight for the day’s action. The air temperature was 64 degrees, but by the afternoon I am certain that it spiked in the upper seventies. Hiking in waders was a toasty proposition. The weather throughout my stay on the creek was clear skies with minimal cloud cover.

My Garmin watch stopped functioning on Sunday, so I only had my Garmin Inreach Mini to go by for time. I targeted a one mile entry hike and approximated this to be twenty-five minutes, so I arrived at my starting point and began fly fishing at 10:30AM.

Tasty Meal for Rainbow

Lots of Length

I extended my leader with a section of 5X and attached a size 8 tan pool toy hopper. For a dropper I added a prince nymph. I tested this combination for fifteen minutes with no interest from the trout, so I made an adjustment. I replaced the prince with a weighted 20 incher and then added a beadhead hares ear. The entire dropper from pool toy to hares ear was in excess of four feet. The modification paid off, as I landed a twelve inch brown trout and a similar rainbow along with a smaller brown, before I paused for lunch. All three fish nailed one of the nymphs.Home of Pool Toy Hopper Eating Rainbow

After lunch I resumed prospecting with the dry/dropper. I drifted the flies along a long, narrow band of slow moving water along a vertical rock wall, and suddenly a large mouth engulfed the hopper. I was connected with a muscular slab of a rainbow, and I was able to guide it into my net. Unfortunately , I remained mired on four trout for an extended time, and repeated refusals to the hopper made me second guess the value of the nymphs.

What a Trout Lair

Slab of Speckles

I modified my approach to a double dry with an olive ice dub hippie stomper and a light olive stimulator. These flies enabled me to raise the count to eight, as the stomper and stimulator both produced. These fish were mostly rainbows in the ten to eleven inch size range. Another dry spell forced a reevaluation, and I cycled through a few different trailing dries including a parachute green drake and a size 14 olive body deer hair caddis. The green drake and stomper added a pair of trout to the fish count to reach ten, and at that point I endured a long spell with no landed fish. I was stuck on ten.

Fighter

The sky was bright blue, and the sun was beating down, and I momentarily lost confidence. At this point I judged Cascade Creek as mediocre with low trout density and not a likely future destination. Meh, as I stated in the opening sentence.

Mini Chubby Got the Job Done

I pondered the situation, and I was about to experiment with a parachute hopper, when I spotted a pair of beige body mini chubbies in my fly box that I tied during the winter for situations, where I needed a smaller foam fly than the size eight hoppers and Chernobyls that I typically utilize. I attached the single wing chubby eighteen inches behind the hippie stomper, and I began to prospect the pair. Suddenly the creek came alive with chunky trout that attacked the mini chubby and to a lesser degree the stomper. I was shocked by the fortuitous change in my angling fortunes.

Foam Is Home Held True

Bruiser Brown Trout

I made fairly long casts to deep troughs and slots and current seams, and quality trout aggressively rose to smash the foam flies. All the fish landed in the 2PM to 4PM time frame were easily in the twelve to sixteen inch size range. I had a blast and reevaluated my rating of Cascade Creek.

Spots Galore

Typical Productive Water

Did the improved action result from the fly change, my deeper penetration away from the parking lot, or the improved quality of stream structure? I will never know for certain, but I hope to test the variables with a return visit in the near future.

Fish Landed: 19