Things are shaping up here on the North Toe! Terry Pritchard and I floated the Toe this past Saturday and its the best float we’ve had all year long and it was in high water. Fish were still in the eddie pools behind rocks and any kind of bigger pocket you could find, were holding several fish. The best part of the trip was actually seeing fish pushed over to the bank laying in some more shallow water, this is a good indication that it is heating up and going to be full force within the next couple of weeks. The water temperature stayed at 60 degrees our whole float, which is three or four degrees cooler than our past couple floats but it didn’t seem to matter! Fish were eating a sz. 8 balanced brown streamer with a brown marabou tail and Doug Swisher Brown rubber leg “Big Daddy” dubbing for the body. This fly represents everything in this river, crawfish, sculpins, hellgrammites, and even looks like the lamprey eels we have in the river. We caught fish on a couple different retrieves, stripping in slow 8 inch to one foot strips worked the best as well as dead drifting. Another way we caught fish was to drift by a place and throw back up into the hole and just let the boat pull it downstream as you float through the hole. We put two fish a little over 16 inches in the boat along with a lot of the average 13-14 inch fish. There was action from the moment we put in, to me missing the last fish right before the take out!
Call today (828-765-3474) or book a trip online to come float or wade with us for these mean Toe river smallies!
