HAPPY TROUT-TOBER
The light on the water was the color of pewter and the leaves along the shore glowed orange-gold. We waded this October tailwater carefully, keeping our flies out of the willows and junipers and in the current seams that folded around the rocks.
On October tailwaters, a person soon learns that the best way to catch fish in the absence of a hatch is to go small and heavy. For me on this morning, that meant a tungsten-beaded No. 16 Flashback Pheasant Tail and a No. 20 Beadhead Bubble Back. My friend Jeff Perin, a fly shop owner and confessed fly snob, rigged with a Beerhead Baetis with a trailing a Prince Nymph. The trout seemed to throw up their fins in surrender. I
