Saturday the river jumped from around 120 cfs to 200 cfs and the fishing was FANTASTIC! You could do no wrong, the Browns were all over just about anything on a dead drift.
Then the storm Sunday dumped a ton of rain and the flows skyrocketed! I fished and it was stupid. There is no reason to fish in super high flows.
However, something to keep in mind is that runoff is usually a different temperature than the river. The runoff entering the river this weekend was really warm and river temperatures were approaching 70 degrees.
As you can see in my pictures, I found some clean cold water above where the major runoff inputs were entering the river and found some fish. No matter how desperate you are to catch fish (and I get desperate) keep an eye on the water temperature and stick to the cold water. You will catch more fish and minimize risk to the fish.
The smart move would have been to say forget it and fish for some smallmouth...
Wait, I did that too.
