We had shad flies on for a while with fantasies of hooking up; but really we were there to practice, and the shad had other ideas anyway. In the afternoon we moved to this spot, and the area below the weir just screamed "smallies" to me. Luckily, the turbulence covered the violence of newbie casting, and the smallies really showed up and kept hitting the Flashaboo Streamer I had on. Normally I don't take pics while fishing, but after the third or fourth smallie the guide couldn't take it anymore and dug his phone out. It died after one shot, so I dug mine out and handed it to him for the rest. Looking down river in one of the shots you can see what good casting looks like; that's the other clinic attendee who picked it up pretty fast.
Locally the Russian is a storied river, once the scene of huge salmon and steelhead runs and the home water of fly fishing great Bill Schadt. The Russian is greatly diminished thanks to a dam that went up in the late 50's (or 60s, not sure) but still flows through some incredible scenery. Steelhead and salmon still do migrate up, and I've seen some really large sturgeon in there.
I was using a Fenwick 909 or 112S with a 1500 series Medalist and OPST heads. These shorter "switch" rods really work well with the short OPST heads + MOW tips.
