Day 2, and sure enough, nothing like yesterday. I can’t get over how drastically the water gets jacked around by the city out here from one day to the next. It was far from a complete bust though. The fish that were so actively waving their tails around yesterday had mostly all vanished but there were still a few cruisers in the shallow channel on the opposite shoreline.

After a frustrating hour of watching my fly get ignored time after time I finally switched it up to a pattern Dave had turned me onto a few years ago out here on a similar day of endless refusals. I still have a tough time believing these fish can actually “see” any difference in small flies in the limited visibility of the muddy water and therefore typically concentrate the majority of my efforts on presentation, but much like that sunny day with Dave, making the change was all it took.

The first cast with the new fly brought a cruiser about 12 inches off course as he confidently sucked it up!

It took a little while for the water to calm back down after that one, but once it did I put the next cast within a foot of the next cruiser, and sure enough, here he came!