March 24, 1998 Lower Stanislaus

Time:7:45am- 1:00pm
Weather: Slightly Cloudy
Water Temps: low 50s
Water Level: 3200cfs
Insects Observed: Ants
Hours fished: 4
# of fish caught: 4

Narrative:
Today the tungsten bead Prince Nymph was king. I not quite sure why, may be it was it’s buoyancy or lack there of in the water column. Maybe its hexagon shape reflected the subsurface light in an alluring way or maybe it just sank faster and stayed down longer than whatever else I was using today. The TB Prince or another fly in tandem with it, caught every fish I hooked today.

I arrived at the river about 7:30, much later than I usually do when spending the night in Modesto. I knew the river would be high, a flow check the night before had put it at 3,200. It had been a while since I’d been on the water when it was this high, so I decided to check the high water mark by the dam. The mark was completely covered and the pool below the dam transformed into a raging torrent of white water. For amusement I checked out my favorite spot, "not fishing there" I thought. The water was well over the banks that define the upper river. Taking the hint, I traveled down stream. "There are a couple of rocks I can fish from."

There’s a small trail on the low end of the river. Half of which, was covered with a foot or so of water. My journey down stream to the areas I felt would be productive, found them high in water and heavy with sticks. All the rocks I had planned on fishing from where covered with enough water to make fishing dangerous. (Rocks at the Stan are notoriously slippery). Traveling back up stream a bit, I came to the most over fished spot on the Stan- the "Burping Rock", so called because at the right water level it makes a burping sound.

Normally access to the Burping Rock is easy, cross a little trench, wade to the outside of the rock and your there. Now the small trench had become a sheet of water 30ft wide. It was too fast to cross but it did look like it might hold fish. Fishing my new 3wt, I tied on a regular bead Prince and a worm; I was in business. After a half dozen cast of catching neither fish nor bottom, I figured I wasn’t getting down and added a split shot. Immediate, I hooked a tree limb. I’d been throwing tuck casts to the base of a tree standing in water. I Figured that would be a good holding spot. I’d hang up 6 more times before I realized that the extra weight was causing my line to arc up like a sling shot. I need to throw tighter loops.

Pulling off the shot, I decided to tie on a tungsten bead Prince. Tungsten beads are heavier than regular beads and I had tied 6 in anticipation of today’s fishing. I was shortly into 4 fish, the biggest measuring 13 inches and giving up quite a struggle on my little rod. After about 10am I stopped catching fish and started losing flies. Bewildered by this and my ability to seemingly wade farther out on each cast, I decided to head up stream. (I would later find out that the water started to drop at about 10. This would cause the fish to move and of course make my wading easier.)

Moving to the section I caught fish last week, I was curious to see how swollen it might be. Swollen it was. The rock I was fishing from was now an island. I managed to climb into a tree above the rock and throw a couple of casts, confident that I’d catch fish. After a few good drifts and hang ups, I decided it was time to go.

I traveled back down stream to the Burping Rock. The water still looked good so I threw in couple casts. Somewhere along the way I went from fishing to casting practice and decided to make the most of the fast water. I practiced different variations of curve casts and tucks for about an hour; all the while, trying to figure out which cast would get my fly down fastest and give me the best drift.

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