Getting the Best Out of Late Season Fishing on the Big Wood

After a couple months of great winter fishing on the Big Wood, the season will officially close tomorrow.  Now it's time to let our native rainbows spawn so there will be plenty of fish for years to come.  With the fantastic weather of late, we've been optimizing our last few days on the river, and the fishing has been quite good.

I took Steve Schott and his nine year old son Nathaniel fishing yesterday.  With summer-like conditions, we left the coats in the truck and took off for the river.  The fishing was consistent, and it seemed like the fish kept getting bigger as the day went on.  Towards the end of the day, Nathaniel landed about an 18 inch rainbow, which was definitely the fish of the day.  Well...it was the fish of the day for about four more casts, when he tied in to a monstrous brown.  I was in disbelief as he played this fish on 5x tipped for about 10 minutes.  We landed (tailed) the fish, snapped a few photos, and explained to Nathaniel that he should probably retire from fly-fishing.  That fish is going to be hard to beat.