Epic Day on the PT with Browns & Fatties 10Apr14

Whoa... one of the best days fishing ever on the PT. The water was up finally to ~160cfs which is 2X my prior outing... the water was really turbid and all manner of things were coming down - especially in the AM after they raised the flows. I fished all day with AM upstream from Nature Center to the bridge and PM upstream from Valco parking to just past the hatchery. The AM was great with a BWO hatch and midge hatches but I was subsurface the whole time as it was working and I saw so few rises despite the hatches. I thought of leaving after lunch but I'm glad I didn't as the water cleared in the afternoon and I caught a bunch of big fish. I used a 4-fly long line nymphing technique good for this water and every bug worked... tung BH back ice mayfly (my fav weight), grey RS2 sparkle loop mayfly emerger, a variety of back and green midge larvae, and final drop to my Smethurst's variant (brown) or KF flasher (olive) midge emergers. The final midge worked best, especially on the biggest fish. Again in the AM I struggled a bit landing the big ones - I think I'm not so deft with the broken hand; especially disappointing was a huge brown which I thought was tired but mightily stole my rig as I bent down to net him. There were other big remote releases too - trying to horse the fish in too quickly wasn't wise so I eased up a bit in the PM and brought in oodles of huge, fat rainbows and one brown. Total weight on the day had to exceed 60 pounds and I had 4 fish ~20" or more and nearly all were >17"! I was lucky there was a family in awe when I landed the longest and heaviest fish so I got the hero pic below. I am very sore, my allergies are screaming but I am very satisfied with this first real epic outing of 2014.