Project Healing Waters Outing to Rose River Farm

Scott and I set out this morning to meet our Project Healing Waters friends for a PHW outing at Rose River Farm.  We knew it would be wet with a storm approaching and were anxious to see what the PHW coordinator had lined up for us.  We arrived at the Pavilion at 0850 and the fisherman needing assistance were already spoken for by other guides.  Scott introduced me to the PHW crew (this was my first trip) then we headed down stream to the lower limit of the farms' waters.  Scott and I both opted for 4wts, his an Orvis TLS and mine a clearwater.  We fished dropper-dropper combos beneath strike indicators on 4 & 5X tippets.  The most successful fly turned out to be a #20 zebra midge.  We began the day with several hookups in the 15 inch range and continued to fish the same holes (for too long) until our desire to fish new water became too great.  The first cold rain drops hit at 0951 and came more steadily hour by hour ~ thank goodness wind was never an issue.  We retreated for lunch at 1200 fishing a few holes enroute to the pavilion where we found a pot of welcoming chili.  After trading stories we helped out a few friends, old and new at the pool at the pavilion.  After lunch we changed clothes and headed upstream to the bridge and fished back downstream toward the Pavilion.  We were skunked in the first two holes/runs then began to steadily pick up 3-4 strikes per hole often landing 1-3 fish per hole.  We fished all the way back down to our morning positions then worked our way back up to a honey hole along a rock improved bank.  The last two hours we spotted/guided for each other enjoying putting each other on fish at each hole.  This turned out to be perfect as an uninformed cast was useless and a guided cast had high hook-up potential.  Scott caught a gorgeous rainbow then put me on a gorgeous aggressive bow on the last cast of the day.  As we departed two fisherman Scott had helped on a previous PHW outing approached the pool and we spent another 10 minutes putting them on fish as well.  We left chilled, but with big smiles on our faces having caught 7-8 rainbows apiece, having made new friends and put some of those friends on some big fish.