Mad River Report 6/17/13

          What a nice day to be out on the Mad! The weather was perfect except for a little rain in the morning. Nick and I decided that this would be a good opportunity to head up north and test out our trout fishing skills. We arrived at about 7 a.m. and fished well through the morning until about 1:30 p.m. The river was flowing just right at 155cfs after coming down from the large rain storm we just had. We knew that we were going to have a good day throwing streamers, but especially nymphs.

          During the beginning of the day we experimented around with streamers and nymphs in the fast, deep runs.  We were using sink tip leaders for our streamer set-ups and long fluorocarbon leaders with two nymphs and heavy split shot set as much as 10ft down for nymphing.  We soon discovered that nymphing was the way to go after Nick landed a nice little brown on a home-tied scud-like nymph right away.  With this said, we immediately put down our 6wt ONEs and exclusively fished our 10' 4wt S4 and ESN.

          We moved around quite a bit throughout the day to various deep holes that had plenty of structure. The Mad is full of down and over-hanging trees and deep holes that these fish just love to hang around in because of the readily available food and shelter.  The key today was to locate these spots especially with the hot sun out.  We dialed in on stonefly patterns and various forms of the Prince Nymph in sizes 18-14.  At one of the last deep holes we were at, I hooked into a monster Mad River brown trout.  The fight lasted some time because I had 6x tippet with a size 16 purple flash Prince on while trying to steer him out of cover.  After the fish started to tire out, Nick came in with the net and got him.  He was a beautiful fat 23 inch, 7lb brown.  What a great way to end a day at the Mad!  If you have any questions, feel free to call the shop at 513-871-3474.

Tight Lines,

Alex Helmicki