B and I did manage to get in a little trout fishing last night. We headed to the upper Rogue River for the evening hatches and hoped to maybe entice the big brown that B hooked briefly on our last trip.

We arrived at about 7:00 and found that we had our favorite stretch to ourselves once again. After rigging up our rods, we waded across the river and hiked downstream aways to a spot we thought might have a good whitefly hatch at dusk. To begin, we both chose the Power Ant pattern; I used a tan one and B used a black one. B caught a couple of dinks, including one little perch of all things, and I got a couple of splashy refusals, but nothing more. I fished downstream around 'cedar waxwing' bend (I think I'll just call it 'waxwing bend' from now on. There are always a handful flycatching there...) I caught 2 little 6" browns and a tiny perch swinging a soft-hackle hare's ear nymph. What the heck are the perch doing in here?

Further downstream, there was a fair amount of surface feeding heating up. And some of the splashes looked a lot like they were created by fish larger than 6". I noticed a few hatching insects, the beginnings of the whiteflies among them. I switched to a whitefly emerger pattern and drifted it and swung it at various speeds over every riser I could reach, but they all ignored me. I switched to a white Wulff and drifted and swung that at various speeds past and over them all and they continued to ignore me. Hmmmm. Fine. I can take a hint. The whitefly hatch was well underway at this point, lots of them all around. The fish feeding was not frenzied, but there were plenty of fish to target. I targeted plenty but caught none.

I hopped up on the bank and hiked back up to Waxwing Bend where B was. She had caught a couple more dinks and later caught the biggest fish of the evening - a 10 1/2" brownie - on a muddler I think. We fished bigger wakers, muddlers, etc. well into the night. B did get one very impressive-sounding strike from her big bad brown, but didn't hook him. I did no better than a couple more splashy refusals. I still don't know how to fish the dang whitefly hatch.

Stats
Mosquito Rating: 1, on a scale of 0 to 10
Number of flies lost: 0(!)
Number of flies on my patch at the end of the night: 9
Wildlife sightings: Great Blue Heron, one mallard female, cedar waxwings
Did I get to use a spey rod?: Next question...
Save of the night: B recovered her biggest flybox after dropping it in the river