Hiked into a pretty sweet looking run yesterday, about 100 yards of 'canonical' swing water, albeit a little dirtier than optimal. I didn't have time to fish it all, so I chose to fish the lower half.
A guy pokes his head through the brush. Totally cool dude, he was going to walk downstream once he saw me. I let him know the upper half of the run was untouched and encouraged home to fish it. He dropped into the top of the run and hooked a fish on the 3rd cast ( and then lost it in about 15sec).
Honestly, I was almost as excited as I would have been if I had hooked the fish. I have yet to swing up a winter fish in this system and it was nice to see a glimmer of hope... there's a non-zero chance of me checking that box on my bucket list.
Grube, I'm troubled that you didn't have time to fish all of a 100 yd run if you had enough time to walk into and out of that run. May I suggest that when you walk into an unoccupied run that you fish it all? If you're short on time, let the time you do have dictate how quickly you fish through it. Far better IMO to fish the whole run quickly than to fish only a portion of it slowly. UNLESS you happen to know precisely where the "cream" of that run is, you know, that once spot in the run that consistently holds fish more than other spots in the run. High grading is one of the tools in an angler's tool box, so use it when you're short on time.
Fair and helpful response. There were other factors. Getting to the top of the run required wading along the shallows, and I was already gassed; the lower half was low hanging fruit. And, I really was on a tight time budget; one of those I'll be back by 'X' when it's already 'X++' scenarios; nobody else has that problem do they?
Agreed that sampling the entire run would have made more sense, and I'll tuck that away for the next time I'm on a time crunch. Either way, I won't make the same mistake when I go back to this spot tomorrow
Salmo's reply above confirms a suspicion I've developed after fishing a few runs lately.
There are sweet spots within runs that warrant fishing a bit slower, but generally a full run covered is better than a half-run covered in finer detail in the same timeframe.
I feel your time budget pain, Grube. I've given up by promising only a return time of sunset plus drive time.
Agree with Salmo, you are better off fishing the whole run very quickly then piece mailing, unless, as mentioned above, 75% of fish come from one holding lie, then pound that and leave. Never underestimate how far a kamikaze aggressive fish will move for an offering.
The guy probably had an old silver on for a few headshakes and thought it was a steelhead, atleast that's what I would tell myself...lol
Hiked into a pretty sweet looking run yesterday, about 100 yards of 'canonical' swing water, albeit a little dirtier than optimal. I didn't have time to fish it all, so I chose to fish the lower half.
A guy pokes his head through the brush. Totally cool dude, he was going to walk downstream once he saw me. I let him know the upper half of the run was untouched and encouraged home to fish it. He dropped into the top of the run and hooked a fish on the 3rd cast ( and then lost it in about 15sec).
Honestly, I was almost as excited as I would have been if I had hooked the fish. I have yet to swing up a winter fish in this system and it was nice to see a glimmer of hope... there's a non-zero chance of me checking that box on my bucket list.
The fact that you got excited for the guy hooking up just above ya like that speaks loudly.
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