Driftless on the fly

This was my second trip to the "driftless", and since I only had 1 day to fish, I decided to revisit a good looking stream.  My first stop at the stream, I got a late start, and spooked every fish in the county.  There's a learning curve to small stream fishing and I didn't want to fumble through learning a new stream.  I had a good idea of the access and pools, and hoped, I'd be more efficient this trip.  Knowing where to cross the stream and which side to approach a pool seems to be very important in these environments.  It's been great fun learning these new techniques.

Big brown on size 18 dropper

Like I said, I had an idea of the stream.  It was early, 530 am when I arrived.  I started with a black bugger in a pool not far from the access.  I saw a few fish rising but they wouldn't eat the bugger.  I didn't spend much time in any 1 spot.  I was searching the deep pools and any woody cover I could find.  The first eat was a bow.

Not long after that I broke off in some cover.  The bugger was getting some eats so I stuck to that same "stick and move" pattern.  After 2 hours (that seems like a long time but when you're tip toeing around a creek in chest high poison sumac, ivy, oak and whatever else - it's not...my right hand blistered a day later), I had managed a couple bows and a brown.  I rounded a corner and saw about 20 browns sipping something off the surface.  My heart jumped, my hands started shaking, and it took about 10 minutes to tie on a dry.

I manged a few browns from that hole, that wasn't much bigger than a 2 car garage.  After hooking several, losing most, and landing a few...they got wise to the idiot standing behind them.  I was just happy to be fishing dry's.

Around 9 am, I switched to a hopper/dropper and the fishing was...I lost count of how many I caught.  I decided to call my realtor and put the house up for sale...unfortunately, there's no cell service in the area.  I guess that's my only complaint for the day...if that's really something to complain about!

They mostly ate the dropper but a few wanted the hopper.  A 18-20" brown came and took a look, but the sudden increase in my heart rate must have sent him back down.  I finished around 1 pm, the water started to feel warm and the fish were taking longer to revive.  I had planned on fishing the evening, but I was completely satisfied with the day, and didn't feel a need to annoy any more browns.