A few hours creekside

Sunday afternoon after the chores were done I found myself creekside for a few hours of angling.

The mission was to try some short line nymphing with some heavily weighted small scud and midge patterns.  I'm not exactly a French/Spanish/Czech nymphing guy, but I decided to go deep, sans bobber and see what happened.
What happened was this...

I was immediately confronted with rising fish so I tied on a a 24 RS2 emerger and fished dry.  The risers were small, but I sat and watched the pool and the fish before a threw in and promptly blew the first sipper and consequently the whole pool.  To save SOME face, the fish ate and I set up on air... 
I finally got back to the original agenda after stopping at a popular bridge crossing with a deep run on the downstream side.  I reasoned that most of the seasoned anglers would shun such a "wormhole" in favor of deeper haunts AND that anyone attempting to fish it would be an indicator fisherman, who would be unable to ply the depths due to bobber and fast flows.

I cast, my tandem weighted bobberless rig, sunk, drifted and pondered the zen purism of angling deep with out indicator watching for the tell-tale pause, twitch and stop that all of the magazines and nymphing books suggest may be the activities of trout below.  I thought about how difficult and intense the whole operation was.  I craned my neck and squinted to follow the dark olive flyline as it exited the shadows into the full glare of reflected 2pm sunlight that even my $189 polarized glasses couldn't contend with (that blazing orb, afterall, heats our planet from space...best of luck Revo).
...after my 9th rainbow I determined that my heronlike prowess, and kingfisher eyes were successfully helping me land fish that a DNR truck had recently dumped off the bridge.

At my vice, midweek, during the hours that I should be sleeping, I think of fish and hatches, and days, and moments and critical variables like one turn of soft hackle or two.  I ponder color, refractive light, shadow and hook size.  I think of leaders and underhand casts and hope, as I finish 1/2 dozen of this or that size 18 burnt-umber crippled baetis emerger with poly no make that cul de canard, split wingcase, that some wise old brown will find my offer worthy and take a chance on my handiwork.

I never (ever) think of stocked rainbows just off the bridge near town.

So, I set to work and hammered every last one that I could.

For moral highground's sake I will say that I ventured upstream and hooked, on said nymph rig, a solid 15" Brown that hit the sky and popped the faux chironomid in mid air.  The leap was very rainbow-esque but at least it was from a brown that was the offspring of a fish planted 20+ years ago instead of fresh off the chute last week...

Where are the native brookies in this story?  Good question...

Caddis...yum.

Trout Chow?

I spoofed a hatchery fish (at least this one had most of its fins)