Had the day off yesterday and made a quick run up to the N Fork of Stanislaus just for the day. Had a pretty good day fishing around the Sourgrass access point. The morning started slow, but then I caught a couple wild rainbows about 8 inches and then came into a group of obvious planters. The wild trout felt twice the size of the planters even though the planters were all decent sized, in the 12 - 14 inch range.
The day slowed down again in the afternoon, but then picked up towards the evening, with wild fish starting to bite. Normal patterns were working - elkhair stimulators, copper johns, hoppers, etc. I was fishing a nymph dropper under a dry which I have pretty much switched to permanently, getting rid of the indicators that I used for years. I think it is pretty effective, easier to read, and spooks smart fish a bit less. (A friend a while back demonstrated to me in person when we were fishing Hot Creek - fish would see an indicator and literally swim the other direction). Now I only use a putty indicator if I am high-sticking.
Ran into a local who said that up the canyon there are some big Browns. Next time I'll do the hike and see if I can find them.
I fished the North Fork Stanislaus River about a month ago where it flows through Camp Wolfeboro, a Boy Scout owned camp. In camp there weren't very many fish, though I did see one good-sized brown. I mostly fished outside of camp where there was less fishing pressure. At the base of a waterfall I hooked into a nice fish on a black bugger. I never saw the fish because of the turbulence at the head of the pool, but he felt big and took quite a bit of line before coming loose. All of the fish landed were wild rainbows. Some were caught on buggers, others on an Elk Hair Caddis, and some on small mayfly nymphs. There were some HUGE caddis larvae on the rocks, but my attempts to imitate them were fruitless.
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"Nothing makes a fish bigger than almost being caught."
I was up there about 2 weekends ago, camped over night near Sand Bar flats. I landed 1 nice brown that was about 16-17", the rest were mostly wild rainbows from 8-11" with a few browns in the same range. I saw one guy dunking worms come out with a nice 18-20" brown. You have to drive about 15 miles of dirt road to get to the camp ground, there is a good trail that heads up stream but none go down stream. Access is mixed, in some areas you can step off the trail and fish, in others it's serious rock scrambling and canyoning. It's a beautiful river full of trout with a wide variety of large pools (more like ponds), plunge pools, pocket water, riffles and more. Mornings were good, high noon until 3 or 4 was a bust, and in the late afternoon/early evening everything went nuts. October caddis husks were just starting to show in the shallows and you could find the larva in the shallows, the Sierra streams should be about ready to burst with them. I fished mainly copper johns during the day (copper, red, and green) and dries in the afternoon/evening. Dry fly pattern didn't seem as important as a good presentation once they started rising, makes sense since there was just about everything in the book hatching late in the day. I would think the same would be true for just about any Sierra stream right about now.
Oops, my above post was for the Middle Fork Stanislaus, this weekend I made my first trip to the North Fork Stanislaus at Big Trees. I parked at the bridge and worked upstream, fishing Saturday evening and Sunday morning. Not a lot of bug life but there was enough to keep the trout looking at the surface and willing to strike at a half decent presentation. A caddis pattern was working pretty well though I think nymphs would have done at least as well, but it was fun to fish the dries. Nothing big and not huge numbers but 8-10" rainbows and browns kept things interesting. All were wild except for 1 planter rainbow that was a bit skinnier than the others and had a blandish silvery coloring and just kind of went flop flop flop towards the net. In contrast after one of the wild 'bows jumped I had to give a yank on the line to keep him from smacking into a rock that he was about to land on. The trail upstream of the bridge disappears pretty quickly and it turns into a combination of bushwacking over the cobbles, game trails, and a few distinct paths here and there but overall not too hard to negotiate. Once you get above the plunge pools near the bridge you get to some real mellow sections where the wading is easy and there's a lot of pockets to fish. Except for some bait fishermen at the bridge I had the rest of the river above the bridge to myself. I got started around 3:30 - 4:00 on Saturday and it was slow but steady. Not much was happening for bugs before 9:00 am on Sunday, then it was pretty steady until I left at noon when it seemed like it might be tapering off a bit. It seemed like anything brown was good, but a dark gray caddis pattern @ 12-14 was best. I'd bet that most standard nymph patterns in a 12-20 would produce and there were lots of great places for high-sticking, I had a couple of takes when fishing a copper john until the bugs started coming up, then I switched to dries.
