Finding Triple-Digit Trout

Nope, the title isn't referring to numbers of fish. That would be on my home stream where I have caught triple digit numbers in an evening. Today it was a different stream with larger trout and triple digit was in reference to the air temperature, which was 84°F when we started in the morning and 103°F by the time we finished in the afternoon. With Tom's and my birthday the first two days in August, it will sometimes be a little hot when we get together for our birthday bash.

Hoping to get some teeth marks in the new batch of Morrish hoppers

We arrived early morning to three vehicles where we normally start. No one was in sight, but it was obvious these were fisherman, so we headed to another access and found a few nice fish.

Tom with a nice bow from a shallow but undercut grassy bank

Reaching the end of the most fishable water, we decided to return to the original start point and hope we'd be able to find some fish behind those who had gone out earlier. We did. The fishing wasn't spectacular, but we found enough to keep it interesting. My poor skills rubbed off on Tom today. As he was drifting a bugger, he left it sitting out of the current while looking where to toss his next cast. I saw his indicator go down as he pulled in a little line to get set for the cast and thought it sure looked like he had a fish. A couple seconds later, he looked down, saw the indicator down, and was surprised by the presence of this nice rainbow at the end of his line.

Tom's fish that hooked itself

Tom's good skills also rubbed off on me. I had drifted the hopper past a clump of overhanging grass when Tom called out that there was one following it. I immediately spotted the fish, watched it slowly follow the fly downstream and nose up to it until the fly disappeared from sight. A little lift of the rod and the fight was on with this nice brown. It took a Tom-level of patience and calmness to not pull the fly away too early. 

This guy was hiding under the little grass clump right above my head in the picture

Talking to a couple guys we ran into who had been there the day before, they said there had been a group fishing it all week. With the high temps and that much pressure in the previous days, we were happy to find the fish that we did in the triple-digits. Another successful birthday bash for Rick and Tom.