A look back at 2014

Posted by : Ebrant10 Wednesday, January 28, 2015

It's really hard to believe that 2014 came and went so fast, but it definitely did! It was a great year for me and I was really able to get out and meet a lot of new folks and check out a pile of new water.

(It's not always the size that counts)

From early on in the year, every chance I could get on the water I took and ran with it. Late winter was pretty ugly and we had plenty of snow and cold which made spring take forever to get here.

But once it came we had great flows all spring and pocket water was a great bet until summer came around. With the cows and everything getting to fish a lot of hatches isn't always something that I get to do, but I did manage to see a few good ones.

The Grannom Caddis are that bug-wise marker for me that means warmer weather is usually settled in.

I caught the grannoms with my cousin Nick, while the Caddis were dancing I hooked up with this guy on a stonefly nymph. What a great fight, he took me downstream quite aways before he ended up in the net. A few good pics and it was back in the stream and swimming.

I caught the tail end of the sulphurs and made the green drakes on a local limestoner and the major mayfly hatches were done for me for the year other than a few sporadic hatches.

Summer brought around the typical low water and wary fish that it usually does.

We weren't the only ones looking for water this day!

Summer is always kindof humdrum for me, especially when the rain just seems to stop.

Turning leaves are always a welcome sign, dropping temperatures and pre-spawn colors get me all wound up

There's just always some magical feeling being out in the crisp fall weather. 50 and 60 degree days just seem like a big sigh of relief after temperatures in the 90s through August.

Late fall was kind of a magical time for me, fish were getting in gear to spawn and I was finally able to break that magical 20" mark with a wild brown.