In Kings Canyon I tried doing a little bit of fishing on our last full day in the park. The river was really high, which meant that most of the fish were hugging the bottom to avoid the current.
Standard practice in those conditions is to either use very heavy gear to reach the bottom--which I don't think is fun--or to fish around the edges and catch the trout that are avoiding the current by hiding in little pockets of calmer water.
We'd seen fish in the river and streams we were hiking by, but they were all in deep pools.
As we relaxed by the river on our last day, I set up my gear and made a few casts. Boy, the river was high and fast. I watched my fly go racing down the current...far faster than any fish would chase it.
A pocket here, a pocket there, and then I had a fish. A tiny little three-inch trout that I quickly set back into the water. After fifteen more minutes of fighting the wind and river, I had another one, this one a full six inches long.
Not bad. If the pattern continued, I would soon be catching mammoth lunkers of twelve and even twenty-four inches.
No such luck. In fact, no more luck at all.
So I packed it in and sat by my wife on the shore of the river, watching current race by, and planning to fish again another day.
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