I had a client meeting this morning for work less than a mile from Kings Creek, a short distance from my home. I had never fished before, so I decided to give it a quick shot over the lunch hour. I knew very little about it, since I’d never really heard anyone mention it, I only knew it contained naturally reproducing browns.

 

I stood at the bridge for awhile trying to decide whether to spin fish or pull out the fly rod. Obviously conditions were far from ideal given that it was high noon and going to be pushing into the 90′s to add insult to injury. Fish when you can is what I always say, the heat generally isn’t a deterrent for me. Given the tiny size of the stream, grass folding in on it everywhere, I knew I had to go with the fly rod. Most guys I know would never fly fish in this situation, but I’ve grown to enjoy tiny and tough conditions.

 

I started with a wooly bugger as searching pattern. No fish were found out in the runs, riffles and pools. Pretty quickly I realized the fish were under the banks. I had a few fish dart out to take my bugger, only to reject it at the last moment. I downsized to the largest unweighted bead headed prince nymph I had in the box. I wanted the most stealth presentation possible so I fished it “naked” (no split shot or indicator or tandem rigs). It’s been a long time since I fished with this basic rig. It did the trick!

 

This solid fish rejected the bugger twice, only to succumb to the smaller nymph. A fun fight on the 4wt.

 

Clearly this little stream held a respectable population of browns. Even the little guys were plenty chunky!

 

Eventually my luck ran out and the stream turned into to a tiny weed choked trickle, though I was still getting hits under the cover, pulling them out was quite challenging though! All in all it was a great way to spend lunch!