First fish on a streamer!

This post is brought to you by the RTE bed-sheet shark:
these waters are not safe

Last night I couldn't hold out any longer-- I had to redeem my fish-less self and hit the river. Of course it's been ridiculously cloudless and nice-- but the day I decide to fish it threatens rain. Uncharacteristic of this area it remained hot despite the overcast sky and I ended up wading a somewhat trashy section of river (towards the east end of town) in hot muggy weather. Despite the litter, everything was lush and green and this, combined with the humidity (a foreign thing here) I felt as though I had been transported to somewhere very far from Reno.

There were only a few caddis flies about and a smattering of various midges and pmds so I tied on some attractors-- on a #12 prince, and a #14 psycho prince in caddis green. After a while without any fish I also added a tiny #18 zebra midge to the train. This proved to be the key and I was soon into a big fish that put it's head down and dove deep-- In my head I was sure I'd have a big brown in my hand soon-- that was right before the hook came out :-) The very next cast my train of flies became a train wreck and I ended up cutting everything off and starting from scratch. Pissed but undeterred I tied on a big #10 cinnamon-brown stonefly, a #12 tan caddis nymph and another zebra midge and started covering some water. As it turns out this was a game of big and small-- I caught several fish on the tiny zebra midge (nothing of size) and a nice 18"er on the big stonefly nymph:


At this point the camera died (damn battery) and I landed a few more small fish in various mid-paced riffles before the light started getting low. I decided to try and break out of my nymph-only mold and tied on a big bead-headed goblin streamer with lots of underbody lead and went a-swingin'. A few casts into this game I made an across and upstream cast into the bankside, let the fly sink and then mended to get a slow swing into the middle current-- I froze when I felt several violent tugs and then leaned back on the rod when one more wrenching hit came--fish on!. I let the fish peel off quite a bit of line in the fast current before going downstream after him and soon I had another nice 18" trout in hand-- what an evening!

Other than that I will be taking a trip to Blue Lakes (and possibly onion reservoir and knott creek reservoir) over the next couple of days-- I hope to have some good content from there! That said, I have little to no experience fishing still-waters-- and adventure it will be.