Hot Creek Report 5/4-5/8

Steve and I just got back from a few days of fishing Hot Creek Ranch. This dry fly fishing only ranch is a very challenging fishery with luxurious weed beds that are home to a vast array of insect life and provide cover for lots of fat healthy trout. This year we encountered very high winds but we caught many trout in the 14"-18" range and even a few over 20". The water was crystal clear and the trout very spooky. Nine foot leaders tapered to 5X with a 6X 2'-4' tippets are necessary to get the drag free drift required to entice the finicky browns and rainbows. Our preferred fly patterns were, Parachute Adams, Parachute Hare's Ear, olive Parachute Caddis, grey Elk Hair Caddis, and tan Hot Butt Caddis all in sizes 18-24. The wind made casting tough and we had to be creative to get good drifts along the undercuts and in the channels between the weeds. There were beatis hatching and an occasional caddis on the first couple of days. On Thursday and Friday the caddis really started popping and we left the trout rising as we started home on Friday afternoon.

I had an interesting experience on Wednesday morning. While waiting for the hatch to start, I was prospecting the run above the upper bridge and noticed something unusual in the pool below the bridge. It looked like two silvery orbs in the shallow section of the pool. I edged closer and realized that it was a huge 30" brown trout with a 14" rainbow in his jaws. The silvery uderbelly of the rainbow was what had attracted my attention. I was able to get a little closer and get a couple of pics and a short video before he moved off into the deeper part of the pool where I could not see him through the camera lens. I could however see with my polarized glasses as the brown occasionally shook the rainbow and waited until it died. He then spat it out, took it head first in his mouth and swallowed it whole. Check out the first part of the encounter on this video.