Had a fine day on the water this week with two of my favorite people. Once we settled in and found some heads, Ethan and Theo got it done. The word of the day was Efficiency.

First up was Ethan. Two casts and the fish was in the net. Then it was Theo’s turn. One cast and the fish was in the net. Back and forth, these guys fed every fish we found in short order. A few fish got poked instead of caught, and that’s fine. On to the next one.

A little after 2:00 PM we posted up on what would be our last good target of the day. It was an extremely difficult drift, a perfect 2 PM fish for Theo to work. We didn’t change flies much. We knew the fish would eat if we could make the right cast, which Theo eventually always makes. He fed the fish once and missed. The fish kept feeding, so Theo fed him again, and missed again. Which is fine. We laughed because it was such a hard shot, the eat was truly what we were after. The fish did not get stuck and was probably up eating PMDs in the same spot the next day. They’re getting smart out there.

There were two takeaways from the day. The first was patience. I knew where I wanted to be when the bugs fell, but when we arrived nothing was happening. Then fish started to pop up here and there but with no consistency. Eventually a fish downstream started eating good, but to get to him I would have had to move down 30-40 yards, which is a lot of water to burn on this particular bank. We stayed put and waited for a fish to rise within range. That lower fish ended up being our third fish of the morning. Later in the day we were presented with the same scenario. We again stayed put, caught the two close fish, then moved down and caught the lower fish. Patience pays when the targets are few.

The second takeaway was efficiency. Throw at the fish’s head, feed the fish, catch the fish, move on. You can’t have a double digit day if you spend most of the morning on one fish. Proud of the boys, ‘til next year!