Location: Oatka Creek, 2.80'
Conditions: Sunny, 79F
Time: 8:00a-1:00p
Predominant Bug(s): Nothing significant hatching
It was a beautiful day on the water but unfortunately, the weather and casting practice were the highlights of my day. Nothing was coming off the water in significant numbers, so I set up a nymphing rig (sans indicator), and went to town. It seemed size 16 and 20 baetis nymphs would do the trick after some rock turning, but after an hour of nothing, I decided to switch up and move.I decided to spend a little time photographing the bugs I'm trying to emulate while I'm tying. In my previous post I had discussed how I had caught my first fish on a nymph. In researching flies to tie during the very first days of my fly tying adventure, I took to Jason Neuswanger's excellent website, troutnut.com, for some details on the flies I was trying to replicate. And details I found...If you've ever been Jason's website, I'm sure you've found whatever information you were looking for, and probably more.
Perhaps I'm alone in this, but visiting his website and trying to absorb that much information while still so green to the activity was overwhelming! So...I did what I probably should've done just starting out fly tying, copied some of the classics! BH pheasants, Prince's, Hare's Ear's, etc.
Well after photographing a few of these early season (Hendrickson? and Golden Stone) specimens, I realized that I need to be tying smaller! Those Hendricksons anyway were on the order of size 20-22 I believe, but I'm wondering if they're smaller earlier in the season? I'll have to research that a bit.The rest of the fishing day was much like the beginning. I did hook into a couple, but broke them off. I need to improve those knots, maybe I'm not wetting them enough before seating them? Maybe the Davy Knot isn't what I hope it would be?
Overall, still a great day to get out and enjoy the water. And I learned something new about this little creek of ours!
