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Hat Creek Fly Fishing Report

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Hat Creek Fly Fishing Report

George Revel Report on 6.24.2021

Fishing was excellent mid morning from 8-11am or with some Trico and PMD spinner falls. In the evening the Pmd's and Sallys were coming off with regularity. We predominantly fished dries during these prime times. In the middle of the day nymphing and leeching was the ticket as fish moved to their deeper mid day hiding holes. 

Like clockwork, the fish start sipping trico spinners at 8am. The tricos lay trapped in the surface film of the water. Trapped after laying their eggs the night before the spent spinners float downstream and collect in the seams and swirls. 

The rainbows jockey into position to sip these tiny bugs with gentlest of ease. The gentle sip is the tell-tale sign that fish are eating spinners. With no concern of the dead bug flying away the fish can afford to such laziness in eating their breakfast. For this reason, even the slightest drag on your fly will not be tolerated by your quarry. Pair that with crystal clear water slowly meandering and you have the recipe for a chess game that can ensue for the coming hours. Stealth and presentation become paramount. Fishing become more akin to hunting. 

My spring creek spinner leader is 12ft 4x with 3ft of 6x fluorocarbon. The fluorocarbon sinks just below the surface film of the water removing the dimples the tippet causes on the surface film of the water. These fish will not eat your fly otherwise. 

To catch this fish my client and I slowly got into position and watched the pod until we spotted the largest fish in the pod. We watched him sip flies at very regular intervals. Knowing where he was eating was likely several feet behind where he was holding, we slowly positioned ourselves to make a perfect presentation. A quick pep talk about how one bad cast will put this whole pod down and description of the cast that I thought would fool the fish was spoken softly so as to keep our nerves down. We made a cast well upstream of where the big fish was feeding, trying to be careful to not put the fly in line with one of the other smaller fish that were feeding in the area. To catch a smaller fish would be failure and put this larger fish down. The cast landed exactly where it should have. The arial reach mend put the line above the fly so as to avoid a noisy on water mend. Seeing where the fly lands is so important in spinner fishing because often the fly is very hard to see as it lays flat on the water. We feed the line down to the fish with zero drag. My heart was pumping knowing that this drift stood a real chance.  Just as I was beginning thoughts how to phrase our next cast the fish rose to sip the fly seemingly in slow motion. 

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