Verdigre Creek with Roger - May 7, 2011

Roger used to guide on the Henry's Fork for a good chunk of time. Needless to say, he has had epic days of fishing and he has landed epic fish. I thought the last thing he would want to do is chase Nebraska trout in a tiny spring creek - especially one with planted trout (just rainbows). However, as has been previously mentioned, Verdigre is a little gem to me since it has a sustainable population of wild brown trout. The browns make this "stocker" stream very unique and exceptionally fun to fish. Also, it can be quite complex getting that prefect drift.

Roger throwing a small dry to some likely water:

Roger and I made our way casually up to Verdigre. We started at the bridge section and started our way up stream. The weather was perfect - too perfect! The sun was high, clouds were minimal and it was getting hot fast. The water was loaded with midge adults and we even spotted the occasional little stonefly recklessly flying around the water.

Unfortunately, the fish were absent. Of the fish we spotted, they were small and tucked deep under structure. The fish were not that cooperative, either. I started the day with 3 small rainbows and a little creek chub that took my UV scud.

We worked a good amount of water before getting into more action. We missed a few fish on our dries in a "hopper"-dropper rig. We struggled to pin the fish when we got a good rise.

When we got to the end of that stretch of river, we did have some fish consistently rising. I was throwing a size 18 black Elk Hair Caddis and managed a decent rainbow. Roger was throwing a size 18 Hi-viz Parachute Caddis I tied. He hooked up with his first Verdigre brown and his biggest fish of the day:

We decided to give a different stretch of water a try. This time we were sticking to dry flies. Needless to say, nymphing was a bit boring and we weren't getting more fish as one would expect. Once we got some fish to rise consistently, we were hooked on dries and we were not about to look back.

We moved to the next stretch and once we made our way around the kids playing the the creek we were in business. It looked as if some bugs had started to make their way to the surface and before we knew it, the caddis were all over the place, bouncing around chaotically.

I had a hard time keeping my eye on my size 18 EHC so I changed to a size 14 stimulator. It must have looked like the little stoneflies or one of the the bigger caddisflies. Either way, the fish loved it. In one little seam, I hooked and landed 3 browns. One of them was my biggest of the day. He came to the fly right against the copious vegetation on the stretch:

We both managed some more fish. I am not sure how Roger did, but I missed more fish that I ever thought I could have. I also found myself really enjoying the topwater bite. I think I could get used to it.

We had a good time on the little gem of Verdigre Creek. To top it all off, it was a gorgeous evening fishing dries!!!