I got to spend an afternoon at Rocky Ford, and once again the Ford treated me and my fishing partners badly. It wasn't the first time. Rocky Ford can be that way. I was in pretty good fishing company, too. Darc Knobel from the Desert Fly Angler in Ephrata and Rollie Schmitten of Lake Wenatchee were both there doing their best. I had high hopes.

Knobel grew up in Ephrata and has fished Rocky Ford for decades. He and I had talked last week and he told me he has been having some terrific days there. Rollie Schmitten and I have had many great outings on Rocky Ford, and were very excited to be back. This was our first trip here this year.

When we arrived we were shocked at the number of anglers that were there. We could see people on both sides of the stream from the first parking lot down as far as we could see. That's a lot of folks for the middle of the week in February. It was obvious that the weekend crowd has been even larger. We all hooked fish, but landed none.

We'll be back though, and plan to make an earlier start, which should give us an edge.