Solo Brown
I got up at 4 am and made a run at the Shegboygan. About a dozen casts after I got on the water, I hooked a nice steelhead that was on long enough to make me think I was going to land it. Then off. It looked in the upper 20’s in length and in the 8 lb range. I had made up my mind to fish from the top to the bottom of our favorite stretch. A mile or so later, I had not had a single take, and I had seen no browns, one coho, and one king. I tried two other places where we regularly find fish, and found the big zip. There was only one place left to fish. As I neared the bottom of this last section, I saw some activity. There were fish moving in the shadow of a tree, and I couldn’t see what they were or even exactly where they were. I’d see the sweep of a tail, a boil on the surface, the tip of a tail. Casting into the area of activity with the black and white collared leech–the same one the steelhead had nabbed, I got nothing, until about 20 casts later when I snagged a fish by the tail. It turned and plowed away—I broke it off. Rather than go back to a similar fly (because it had not even had a sniff), I tied on another favorite for the browns and cohos: a purple collared leech with a bright scarlet collar. On the second cast the fish nailed the swinging fly. At first I didn’t know what it was because it was in the shadows. Then, it flashed and came to the surface and opened its mouth. It was a nice brown, 31 x 16 (16 x 16 x 31)/750 = 10.5 lbs. I got my other fly back, too.
31 x 16 male brown, 10. 5 lbs/