Bear Flats -Tonto Creek

It's probably starting to look like my favorite spot to fly fish is Tonto Creek at Bear Flats being that I have now been there 3 times in the past month or so. This past week Steve (aka the fly master) wanted to check out the area as so we decided to make another trip (you can check out his account of the trip at www.longshorefishing.blogspot.com). I was essentially excited to try out my new 7'9" TFO finesse 3 weight rod.

Steve and I started hitting the river late morning on Friday and it wasn't long before we were into fish, and as the day went on the fishing continued to get better and better. It was interesting how differently the river was fishing from two week prior.

The high point of the day was late afternoon when we hit into a Mayfly hatch. While we never hooked any on a dry this trip (mostly because we didn't want to swap out our rigs) they were hitting our nymphs like candy. It was during this hatch when I notice a fairly large fish swirling up from the bottom, after throwing two casts over the fish he decided to take my peasant tail and he turned out to be a beautiful 16.6" rainbow, the biggest of the day. By the end of the day we had landed over 35 fish, that's a good day in anyone's book.

The fly of the day was a size 18 peasant tail or similar fly, while we caught a few on 16's the majority of my fish where on the smaller fly. I had tied up some tungsten bead heads (2.5 times heavier than a normal bead) for the first time and I was very impressed with the way they fished in the early season high fast water.

Steve headed home late Friday while I was able to stay up to fish Saturday. I decided to spend the second day fishing a more remote area I had not explored south of Bear Flats. While the fishing was not neirly as good the scenery was amazing with beautiful small water falls and massive rock formations.