Dry flies!

Having had some luck chasing rainbows with my Dad the other day, The Wife, Sam, Liz and I headed out fishing yesterday.  Being a Saturday, we weren't too sure what to expect with the crowds.  But, like most places up here, you just need to walk a ways down the trail to leave the circus behind.  Of course, other people weren't our only competition:

This river is fast and strong, and quite productive.  It doesn't have much typical holding water, but those holding spots that do exist are obvious and, with some aggressive wading to get near the pockets and creative casting to avoid the stream-side vegetation, it's possible to get a decent drift.

Living in Alaska is great, but one of the things I miss most about fishing down south is dry fly fishing.  Casting big streamers to big fish with heavy rods is fun, and chuck-and-duck tactics have their merits, but it's tough to beat a rising fish--something that doesn't come around too often up here.  Thus, I was a bit surprised when, after starting the day with some split shot and an egg and flesh pattern that had proven productive in the past, we started noticing fish hitting the surface.

At first, I spotted a couple smaller fish rising near the edges of a nice run.  I had noticed a couple different types of mayflies dancing around earlier in the day, including what looked like a large drake of some sort.  But because I had in the past seen numerous stoneflies, caddis and mayflies on other waters without so much as a single fish rising, I was reluctant to give up on my streamers and split shot.

After Sam landed two fish in short order on a small stimulator, including one that ran in the mid-teens, I finally relented and re-rigged for surface action.  After all, one fish is a fluke, but two in a row is a pattern.

Within my first half-dozen casts with a dry, this guy came to hand pushing the twenty-inch mark:

Once we started using dry flies, the fish didn't seem particularly picky.  I ended up catching fish on three different dry flies.  So long as the drift was dead and your fly was in a decent pocket, it seemed like something would give it a look.  Of course, since I was on the far side of the river from everyone else, my pictures of other people's fish are from a distance.  Here's one of The Wife's:

And a couple artsy fartsy pictures from the point and shoot: