Fishing is picking up down in the Gorge. Even with the winter flow adjustments (2 peaks daily) the midge activity has picked up considerably in the past few weeks. Most of the midges are in the 20-30 range, pretty small but productive nonetheless. I fished alone this past week, hitting A section from the dam down on wednesday and B section between little hole and coney island thursday. Thursday was much more productive with a good number of rainbows and browns to 18" on midge nymphs and some great streamer action in the afternoon. The weather was pretty fair, highs in the 30's with a pretty consistent wind blowing upstream one day and downstream the other. Looks like the weather should hold for this week, hopefully it'll be good fishing.
Fishing with tiny nymphs can be daunting for even experienced anglers. Tailwaters such as this one tend to either make you better or frustrate you to the point of giving up. My standard rig here is pretty straightforward although it might sound a bit complicated. If I've got the advantage of having a pretty good idea what I'll be using, I rig these before I leave the house and wrap them around a card that I've cut slits in the ends of. This helps keep them organized as well as eliminates fumbling around too much on the water. I start with a 9 foot leader, usually 4x tapered. I prefer Rio's trout leaders. I'll add about two feet of 5x or 6x fluoro tippet to this (Rio FluoroFlex Plus) and tie on my first fly to the end with an improved clinch knot. For flies down to size 26 I'll then tie on another piece of the same tippet to the eye of the hook, not the bend. This allows the body of the fly to sit perpendicular to the leader, increasing your chance of hookups. This second piece of tippet should be about 1.5 to 2 feet long and I'll attach fly #2 at the end. The second fly is usually a bit heavier than the first, I find it helps to put your heaviest fly at the end of the whole rig to help in turning over your loops. This particularly helps with light tippets, windy conditions, long leaders, and long casts. Tiny midge nymphs sink slowly, so I'll add a piece of split shot halfway between the two flies and vary the amount of weight depending on where in the water column the fish are actively feeding. For surface feeders I'll still add weight, but very sparingly, to get my flies just below the surface film. If I find myself in need of smaller flies, the rig changes a bit. With flies smaller than 26 or so, it's not uncommon to have a very difficult time threading two pieces of tippet through the hook eye on the first fly. In this case, I'll tie the second piece of tippet directly to the first with a triple surgeon's knot, leaving a few inches of one tag end hanging. I find it usually helps to use the end that faces away from the terminal end of your leader. I'll tie my first fly to this tag end with either a loop knot or improved clinch to achieve a similar perpendicular orientation to the leader. Here's the important part: if the tag end is too long, it will cause your fly to wrap around the leader while casting. A shorter length will add a bit of stiffness to the rig and help keep the fly free. This does, however, cut down on your fly's natural motion, so a loop knot to attach it can help. Add an indicator of your choosing somewhere above the whole mess according to the depth you want to fish, and have fun. Just don't pull a bassmaster hookset with this stuff or you're going to be giving away a lot of flies.
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