Hot Creek Report 5/5-5/9

Steve and I just got back from a few days of fishing Hot Creek Ranch. This is a dry fly fishing only ranch and can be a very challenging fishery. The luxurious weed beds are home to a vast array of insect life and provide cover for lots of fat healthy trout. This year seems to be a banner year for the fish population and we saw many trout in the 14"-18" range and quiet a few over 20". The water is crystal clear and the trout are super spooky. Nine foot leaders tapered to 5X with a 6X 2'-3' tippet are necessary to get the drag free drift required to entice the finicky browns and rainbows. Our preferred fly patterns were Parachute Hare's Ear, grey Parachute Caddis, grey Elk Hair Caddis, and tan Hot Butt Caddis all in sizes 18-22. 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. Insect hatches were sporadic all week. There were a few beatis hatching and an occasional caddis on the first couple of days and a size 32 black micro caddis, that were almost impossible to see (for me), began to hatch later in the week.

Fishing was pretty good, considering the sporadic hatches, and we both had 20+ fish days with fish from 10"-16". My first day was an exercise in frustration as I broke off a lot of bigger fish capped by a huge rainbow that I worked on for a half hour before she finally took, broke the tippet on the first jump and continued to jump two more time before she realized she was free. It took a while but I realized that I had a spool of rotten 6X that had been in my pack for a while. After I replaced it my hooked to landed ratio went up tremendously. Steve enjoyed a great week with some really fat browns and rainbows to the net (see pics) using his years of experience on the ranch to fool many trout. One of the most fun things about the week was the many friends and customers who were staying at the ranch at the same time. It was great to spend time with all of them.