We found a silver lining in the down economy: Since business has been slow and there weren't as many people to be seen we followed the motto we once heard--when the going gets tough, the tough go fishing!
Tom & Rob went to the Methow February 11 and found a few metalheads. Rob got a hatchery one on a bead (thanks Heath and Nancy!) that was required to be bonked (note the photo that looks like it was taken among the icebergs in Antarctica) and Tom got a native that had to be released on one of his white bunny leeches ("Feed them fur," says he).
Rob got another one upstream a ways at the bridge after wading deeply to get to an abandoned concrete bridge pier, fought it for 5-10 minutes and then decided to go farming instead of wade with it back across the deep water to the shore. No sense of adventure!
The surprise of the day came when we were returning home and decided to try the Columbia. To our surprise there were fish rising and sipping mayflies that had hatched and were floating on the surface. Tom tied on a small mayfly pattern and started casting to the rises. He took three cutthroats, a rainbow, and a mountain whitefish. Dry fly fishing in February? Who'd have thought it? We had no idea there were cutts in the Columbia. Kind of cool!
Sorry the photos are in reverse order. I haven't gotten this whole blog thing quite figured out, but Rick should be happy we at least posted. Rob
