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Sloo Creek is a fun little fishery, easily accessed and with a serviced Campground at the half way mark where I set up camp.

Finished within a couple of minutes and chomping at the bit to finally get onto the water and get that dreaded "first fish syndrome" out of the way ,suffice to say my "castle" was erect but by no means finished and ready to receive me later that day.

Armin and I each picked a side of the stream to fish and we went upstream.... I must admit I was concerned of fishing pressure since we started at a campground and Armin didn’t want to trek upstream for a while like I suggested .Within 15 minutes I arrived at a nice little pocket with a couple of very promising seams, lots of deadfall around it providing cover and fairly deep compared to the part of Sloo Creek that I had seen thus far. It took a home tied hopper imitation size 14 in the far seam to make the first of 3 nice cutties break the surface and have a taste..I was elated since this did seem to be a lot easier than I imagined having heard ,and being concerned about ,the immense fishing pressure the park gets.

Far from it grasshopper ,I had to tell myself about 1 hour later and many oh many times thereafter during the rest of my trip.

Armin did fairly well on his side and we both went up the stream , he was picking  his battles between loosing flies on deadfall as well as back casts and spooking trout.   Since the streambed was extremely spongy and had a tendency to suck one in as well as giving up huge clouds of silt tarnishing the stream ,we choose to stay on terra   firma and make our stand there .In the case of Sloo Creek, the rivers bank is a lot higher than the stream and so there were many oh many spooked fish darting out of lies where neither of us would have ever expected them. My rational was and still is fishing pressure. I have hardly seen a cutty lie out in the open with almost a complete disregard for natural predators ,hardly any cover anywhere, but a tree behind its lie intent to make even the most seasoned fly fisherman think twice about a cast ,and making even a roll cast difficult at best. Of course down and across casts came to mind but were quickly dismissed since the streambed kicked off these huge amounts of silt and the approaching cast put them down in a real hurry...An even so slightly presented parachute cast from up stream put them down as soon as the fly hit the water even 8feet above the fish as Armin told me ( he was spotting since I simply had to try and catch one of those spooky little buggers).

We came to the start of a steep canyon with a beautiful deep pocket and a long drawn out run out and spend about an hour or so plucking away at the sporadically rising fish within our reach ,concentrating on the faster broken water and the fish which had their sight obscured by it. We both did all right for a scouting expedition ,neither of us fishing hard by any means.

Looking back from my side landing a nice one           looking back downstream at those impossible lies

    finally got one of those skittish buggers with a Para-cast presented 10feet above him with an extreme line belly so it could drift naturally towards him , he ran up stream for about 100feet and stopped in a nice deep pocket to be netted right there

We fished until 6pm or so since Laila who took the pictures above was looking forward to a nice evening meal ,and since this day was meant as a scouting day anyways we both agreed.

A 20ounce steak ( I thought I could finish it when I read the menu) a couple of drinks and a lot of laughs later we all turned in .To arise anew and now seriously hunt those skittish ,not so little ,cutthroat we saw the day before. Laila gracefully bowed out and decided to spend the day sightseeing so that we boys could go all out and play without supervision and regard for the non-fishing part of our little party, and we were both thankful to her for that graceful gesture.

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