NOTE to the EMAIL FOLLOWERS: Apologies to the email followers for publishing this last night and then here again this morning. Just felt like I needed to tidy a few things up in the post before I left it alone. There are a few edits/additions.

Ok, I need to edit/re-write this post as it now spans two evenings. June 2nd and June 3rd! (and now June 4th)

Well, it seems the fishing here has been a tale of two worlds. It has been slow in the late afternoon, but would pick up with insect activity as the evening progressed. It seemed like come about 7pm – 7:30pm… the flies would come out of the woodwork and the fish would respond in kind.

Last evening (not quite…. June 2nd evening) started out to be an exception.

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So I catch this fish and start thinking maybe tonight (last evening – June 2nd) will be different right? Wrong! I think I may have missed one or to others which would be all the action till later.

Fellow SRS member Andy Riemenschneider did pretty good there in the 5 o’clock hour. He caught a few fish. One was noteworthy.

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Andy was upstream but let me sidle in just downstream from him. Thanks for letting me do so Andy.

It got pretty slow over the next couple of hours. I decide to walk back to a stump to perch myself upon and scan the situation. As I am walking back I look upstream and notice that we had a visitor. I was a few hundred yards away from the visitor. SRS member Deen McKillips was about 100 yards from it. I found out later that Deen did not know of the bear’s presence.

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Telephoto lenses do distort the optics slightly in the sense that objects further away tend to look like they are closer to objects that are nearer the point where the camera takes a picture. This bear was at least 100 yards away from Deen – but just appears closer due to this ‘telephoto effect’.

I spoke with Andy the next day and he said the bear had a bit of mange on it. Bad luck for the bear. He was also my source for hearing about how Deen did not know the bear was in his proximity. I think Deen would have fished on even if he knew the bear was about.

I waded back out into Pine within 30 minutes after all this took place.

I caught several later in the evening. I walked out about 9pm. Caught them with a Grey Fox Sparkle Dun. I had a hard time seeing the fly but did manage to catch one on a size 12 spinner.

June 3rd!

Evening – right – similar story. The action was arriving late in the day, like usual. Except, it seems to be arriving later and later each evening. Tonight, June 3rd, it was almost 8pm when things started to pick up. I noticed last evening (June 2nd) that some Sulphur sized flies worked a bit. So during the day on June 3rd I tied. I tied some size 10s Grey Foxes, yes they are still appearing, perhaps not in enormous numbers but significantly enough that one should have a few, some size 10 yellow spinners, size 16 ‘Sulphur-like’ dries, and some size 16 yellow spinners.

As I listen to Saga ‘Sagacity’, I only wish that when I was playing in the band that I had started fly fishing then. I would of had a head start on this obsession. Ah, so I started seriously about 1992 or 93. But I dabbled early enough to buy my first real fly rod from my friend who worked at Wolf’s General Store. This had to be some time in the mid to late 1980s. This tangent is brought to you by… ellifiknow. I digress.

THIS… evening was even better than last. I switched between the Sulphur pattern I tied earlier this day (which caught a couple of fish) to, eventually, a size 10 yellow spinner. I fished until a I could only see my fly half the time and then called it a night (9pm in Slate Run, according to my eyes).

I don’t think it was this guy above, but a fish I caught last evening that had two other hooks in its mouth.

The fly has yellowish hints of color in the deer hair that doesn’t show up in the picture very well. And I’m pretty sure this was tied as a split wing fly. Looks like a quill body too. The hook, needs no introduction. With barbs on the hook shank, its a bait hook. Quite legal here where I’ve been fishing. But this fish had both of these in its mouth when I caught it. I wonder if the fly fisherman had landed the fish before I did?

Look, I got several pictures of my left hand and a fish ( I GOOGLED ‘fish’ to try to get an alternative to the NOUN … fish. This was a little challenging as I an writing this at the end of a day – fishing… and… ok perhaps celebrating a good evening on the ‘crick’) – tonight. I even had a SRS member spotting for me from the picnic table – Thank You Deen.

I don’t see much, if any, orange dots on the trout above. So, is this a Scottish Brown or not? I’m merely curious. All the fish I caught this evening fought for their lives. I released them all and know they will have a fighting chance at survival. Too many times I’ve had a fish impale itself in a way that I was sure that it was probably going to die. It does happen. But this will not keep me from fishing and releasing those that deserve to be released, and even those that do not.

Enough left hand pics. I’ll try to come up with something more next time. But, I do look at this as a ‘report’ from the area – like ‘what’s happening here and now’.

Till we see each other again … UB