Hallow's Eve on the PT with DD 30Oct15

Hallow's Eve on the PT was not epic but did verify a new fly design I built specifically for us for this outing. Plus, what's not to like about chasing Daryle onto the water (an all to scarce sighting). The flows were high at ~400cfs and the color of the water was milky green with minimal visibility... so we had that going against us. We started at the Nature Center and made our way to the first really deep hole where Daryle had a good fish on. That was the best we could muster pre-beers; I didn't even have a strike all AM. In the PM we drove upstream to Valco. Lunchtime. Some youngsters in a very cool low slung red truck showed up during lunch and put on waders... we finished and went straight to the big first weir hole upstream from parking. I walked the weir and got some strikes on Jimi's Axe (my new variant of Purple Haze, more later) but lost 'em... then I had the first of many snags and rig-losses on the tree in the hole. DD and I swapped rig-losses out on the weir walk for an hour or so - twice in the PM. Fishing got better for us mid-afternoon and I landed a couple 16+"ers and lost too many - all fish on the seemingly effective Jimi's Axe - and DD had one on again (and did a little weir dance) and landed a smallish fish elsewhere. Frankly conditions were pretty tough but it was great being out. We could recover a dozen complete rigs (probably $50 in flies) on the tree at lower flows however... grrr.

Jimi's Axe is a BWO nymph and variant of the Purple Haze dry fly... purple thread, root beer KF Flasher tail, blue + purple holographic mylar body, UV purple/black/grey blended ice dub thorax, and 2 wraps of starling soft hackle. Fall BWOs verge on purple and that's why the tie... I brought #20 & #22 versions and both worked as we saw many tiny BWOs coming off mid-afternoon.