Beat the Heat

I firmly believe the fish grow accustomed to the increased traffic on the water's surface this time of year.  I've hooked heavy fish drifting nymphs ten feet just upstream of a group of tubers multiple times.  I recently heard a story about someone dropping a camera behind their raft and having multiple large browns come "kiss" the lens.  I buy it.

Once hooked, this 21" cutt-bow below took it nice and easy in the off-color water...until she spotted me and took off downstream with a vengeance.  While running her, some inflatable recreation types entered the run and actually passed over the top of the fish before she went to the net.  Slightly more stressful than I like.  Either way, the San Juan worm wasn't going anywhere.  Photo credit to my Mom visiting from OKC, who insists I was born 6 weeks early because she went on a fishing boat on Pyramid Lake.

I lost a huge gigantic monster brown recently, and after resting the run a few weeks I decided to go renegotiate.  I insist he was still there, but I connected instead with some nice fish pictured below including a nice 20"+ bow that ran me for the longest fight ever...this fish did not want to come in.

Despite a lot of advice to the contrary, I've been having a lot of success recently with a very short leader.  As in crazy short.  Sometimes you just have to try stuff out and let the results do the convincing.  Summer tricks I guess.