Between Rivers: Piney River 2022

Sometimes, fly fishing small mountain streams can be pretty frustrating. Fighting into your waders and seemingly too small wading boots. That first stretch of walking while your waders and boots painfully “fit” to your your foot before you get to some cold water to break everything loose and relieve the pain. The first couple of clumsy casts while you get used to the weight of a 2wt rod after a throwing a 7wt for the past couple of months. The seemingly endless snags, both in the water and in the copious amounts of trees surrounding you. It can all get to you pretty quick! However, this is usually completely negated by the awesome amount of eager trout darting from the depths to absolutely pummel that big, bushy dry fly that only a little native brookie could love. It’s a fair balance most days and that’s what keeps us coming back. This however was not one of those days.

It has been a couple years since my last trip to the mountains to chase these little beauties but in any case, I had some free time and the desire to make the 2.5 hour drive west. Well, Monday was that day! I have fished the Piney River a couple of years ago and seem to recall that it was kind of so-so. By no means a stellar day but worth a revisit. I left the house right around 6AM and rode straight through to the streamside, only stopping for the inevitable stoplights. I was getting the waders on and the rod strung up by 8:30. I have always tied on a fly or two at the car because I have never believed brookies to be super selective and because I have lost half a rod before because I didn’t have the line strung through the guides to hold it all together for the hike in. This morning I tied on a Dyret and a small non-descript tungsten bead head nymph. I have really grown to like the Dyret, especially a foam version I tie that adds just that much more buoyancy.

The parking situation is a bit weird for the Piney but luckily I still had the spot marked on the GPS and recognized the spot and a half worth of pull off from my previous venture. I didn’t remember, however, which road to hike up to get to the first trail sign. I realized my mistake pretty quickly though and made my way up the correct trail. As stated in my last Piney River post, there are lots of POSTED and NO TRESPASSING signs to walk by on the trail/seemingly private driveway before you get to the park boundary but in any case I made it.

My day probably would have worked out a bit better if I followed the tried and true advice to walk a while and not jump on the first pool that looks fishy but I couldn’t resist. I did however get out a bit later and walk up a couple hundred yards to try my luck after not even getting a rise for fifteen minutes. After another half hour or so, I was having some snagging problems on my dropper so I shortened that from 12” to 6”-8” and on the very next cast, I had a nice little trout come up and grab the nymph. I quickly got it to hand and fumbled with my phone for a bit, trying to get the camera up. If there is one thing I have learned with fishing, it is to take lots of pictures of your first fish because it may be your only one… With that one released any my confidence for the day back where I wanted it I charged forth with the fervor of a fisherman on a mission. Well for the rest of the time before lunch, I only had two more come up for a look and I missed both of them. One looked to be a pretty good size, the other one was maybe 4”. With that drive officially burned out, I decided it was time for lunch and a cup of coffee. After that, I had another hour or so before I had to start heading back to the car. I walked up a bit further and didn’t really see anything too promising but I tossed my flies into a couple of the more promising looking runs without any takers.

With that, I decided to call it a day. I will give a list of reasons I think my day went the way it did. First was there was a lot of boot prints on the trail indicating that the trail was well used in the past 2 days. By fishermen? I don’t know but I’ll tell myself that it was. Second, the winter sun was directly behind me for the whole morning so I know I was throwing shadows. Third, the Piney is not the type of water I usually fish when it comes to brookie water, it doesn’t seem to have as much gradient and plunge pools that I am more comfortable with. Fourth, I didn’t wear my lucky boxers. Fifth, I didn’t hop on my left foot three times before my first cast. Sixth, it was a waning instead of a waxing moon… the list goes on.

That’s fine though cause a bad day fishing beats a good day at work, or something like that.