Sulphur Hatch on the Kinnie

Date: May 18^th 

Weather: 93, clear, blue skies

Stream: Clear

Hatch: Sulphur

Beer: The Dancing Man

            My luck on the Kinnie a couple days ago has brought me back. 93 degrees was the temperature in the Cities and I had to make it to its cool canyons. The first two hours fishing was slow. I spooked a turkey walking through some brush and it kept gobbling at me as I fished a pool nearby. I did manage to hook one fish but played it too hard and snapped my line. That sucked as the fly I had on had was the closest resemblance to the ongoing mayfly hatch I spent a long time in agony drifting a variety of flies over some great water with no luck.

            I was about to pack it in and head upstream when I finally hooked a small brown on a small yellow and white fly. As I let the fish go, I saw a plethora of small yellowish mayflies rising off the water. An angler walking by later told me they were sulphurs. They would emerge from just below the water’s surface, float to the top, rest on the surface and fly off. The trout started going crazy trying to slurp as many insects off the surface as they could. There are a lot a great sights in nature but witnessing an insect hatch accompanied my hungry trout is spectacle to behold.

            Till sundown I couldn’t keep the trout off my line. It seemed almost every drift I was getting a strike. If it wasn’t for the mayfly hatch I would have been kicking myself. For every fish I hooked I probably missed one or two strikes. That’s a lot and my only saving grace was the hatch, brown trout are spooky and don’t usually give you another chance.

             With the sun dropping low, I headed back to parking lot while hitting up a few spots downstream. I stopped at a great spot and on my first drift hooked a nice fish. Hooked another one after that and they both went in the creel. When I arrived at the parking lot I popped off the top to a dancing man, threw the fish in the beer cooler and enjoyed the last flickers of light.