It’s my birthday week, and I took an official vacation day to fish. I resolved to fish dries until I found success. So, I headed to the Swift with my 000-wt. fly rod, long leader, and small flies.

I was incredibly happy to land five trout in the morning on dry flies. I’ve been working really hard to improve my dry fly fishing and had tied up some flies as test patterns. It was really fun to see the takes. Best dry was a BWO emerger. Elk hair, a shuck from Z-Lon, Superfine dubbing for the thorax, and olive-brown thread. A rainbow in one of the photos up top still has that fly in its mouth. Then, all the surface action stopped.

So, I started to nymph and landed about 20 rainbows and brookies. Some of the ‘bows were very dark and extremely feisty. Effective flies included Hare’s Ears with pink hot spots and size 20 pupae imitations.

It was great to celebrate a birthday with some trout.