Anyway, over the weekend I was very happy to snap on one of the crucial rituals of said personal fishing culture, The Pit Trifecta: that is, successfully fishing on Pit River reaches #3, 4 and 5. Normally this cannot be done until the last Saturday in April. Normally on that day there are six million gear and bait boys out on the river angling for a weigh-in prize at the annual Big Bend trout derby. But not this year! Now, thanks to some right thinking at the DFG, all of March and April are a catch and release season on all three reaches. Hooray! I'd be upset that I didn't make it last weekend (the new opener) if I weren't so smirkily self-satisfied to have gone this weekend.
On Friday afternoon Pit 3 was fishing splendidly. I'm glad I was fishing alone because the sheer volume and numbers of catching would have been embarrassing. I probably should have stopped after a couple of hours, but I kept on trying unsuccessfully for the big ones that I know from experience are in there. Though a little bit of water was coming over the dam, the water was actually a bit low and a decently colored that afternoon. The next morning when I drove by the color was off and lots more water was coming over.
Friday I had #3 all to myself. Driving through Saturday morning there were three or four cars pulled over on #3, and zero visible activity on #4. Which was perfect, since the conditions on #4 Saturday were as optimal as #3 the day before. My favorite runs there produced more embarrassing sequences of trout: a few nice ones, dink; a half-dozen nice ones in fifteen minutes, dink; more nice ones, and so on. Again no giants, but enough 12-16 inch fish that I couldn't complain.
Tripped up by a blackberry vine, I took a nasty tumble that afternoon. Bashed the left shin hard and really thumped down on my right thigh on a boulder with all my weight. For a while there I was worried about being able to walk out. Add to that the beginnings of a cold, and Pit Boss (a nickname Mike gave me) was feeling like an old man for sure. However, the Trifecta was completed on Saturday evening with one nice fish taken on the margins of an over-high and slightly off-color #5. Normal wading would have been stupid even without bruised legs.
As I blog this blog I am at home sick with some pretty serious cold symptoms. Depending on how bad this gets, I will or won't consider it a wise trade to have gone on Sunday to float the Lower Sacramento from Posse Grounds to Girvan. It was a genuinely hot and sunny March day with very little hatch activity, but as always it was worth it. Took one nice one wading a riffle with stoneflies, got one from the kayak drifting micro mays, and completed the circle by taking a nice last fish on the surface at Girvan. Normally floating is not a huge big deal physically, but dragging the yak down the Girvan side channel and hauling it across the park just about finished me after a long day in the sun.
But in a way that's the point: to get really finished instead of sitting around wondering how the fishing is and how much you're missing. Life is short, and one must snap a few on before snapping off.
Hoping to snap up there at least once more before the meat season starts,
Snap off.
