I had moved up the side of the pool at Furth as carefully as I could, all the while cursing myself for being so careless. I had arrived at the deepest, most likely looking spot since we started fishing, and promptly hooked a log on my second cast. It was just bad casting accuracy.
The fly was in a log right at the edge of the deep slot where the flow slows….the spot where Brown Trout hang out. The only redeeming factor was that there was a big boulder at that spot, which would party obscure me from the holding water, but only once I got there, and only partly.
I moved slowly anyway. Just in case. When I got there and unhooked my hopper, I decided the spot was done for. There was however some water above that was still fishable. If this had been a Rainbow stream it would definitely have held a fish. In Brown Trout water…..I wasn’t so sure. I leaned my shoulder into the boulder on my left anyway, and half lying against it, I directed a few casts into the moving water above and managed the drifts.
While I was doing this, a Brown rose right next to me. I mean, half a rod’s length away. It came clean out, and damned near splashed me. I figured that it had seen the whites of my eyes, when I saw its, and that it was surely spooked. So I didn’t even fish for it. I just clucked, and cursed myself for messing up a run that was now proven held a fish. Then it did it again, only closer this time.
I threw the hopper just upstream of me, and let it drift down past me, closer than my rod tip a few times. No result. Deciding it had gone deeper, I changed to a Troglodyte under a yarn indicator, and did the same. The indicator cocked as the fly drifted past me, indicating that the fly was hanging nearly 5 ft below the yarn at the right part of the drift. Nothing.
I thought about the rise. It had been a “chase that caddis” type of rise, so I looked in my box and chose a lightly weighted partridge spider. That looked suitably caddis-like. I threw that out. On the first drift, the indicator slid away, and I raised the rod.
I took some footage of the fish once I had landed it, you can watch it here:
I reckon it is always worth giving something a try, even when your brain is screaming at you that you are wasting your time.