The three day weekend! Ah, the thought of knowing no return for work on the dreaded Monday, 3 days of true un-worked bliss. In this day and age I'm more than grateful to have a job, I live in the one of the hardest hit areas in the US, but I still get the working blues. In my field of work I deal with those businesses struggling to survive and it takes a mental toll on a man. But, back to the issue at hand...no work for 3 days! The idea of a repeat camping/fishing trip like last year's Memorial Day weekend sounded great, but this particular one only held about a 1/3 of that amount of free time.
Early Saturday morning Joey and I headed a little north of our town to smack around some wild rainbows. This stream is his "teeth cutting" ground and he talks of it as if it spew forth liquid gold. But, to an addicted fly fisherman I suppose hungry, wicked-mean bows are liquid gold.
We arrived and finally got the felt wet at around 6:45am and we were very pleased nobody else would give us company. We passed numerous campers in the lower elevations but not at our desired location for the day. We only had about a half day as usual so the stream had to be close and not too much of a walk. Upon initial inspection absolutely no bugs were coming off so we just went with the faithful dry/dropper combo. I rigged up a orange stimiulator with a pheasant tail dropper...a tiny one at that.
My stick of choice today was knocking the dust off the ultralight 3 weight basspro combo..."white river" that call it. I know lots of people, including me, have to start with combos that the big box stores provide due to cost of entry for fly fishing, but this set up is premium in my opinion. It was not a starter rod for me (and not priced as such). I purchased it because it looked and sounded so awesome...and indeed it is. It truely is ULTRALIGHT. I'm not sure but I'd bet it's right at 1 ounce or less and came equipped with a tiny reel that only holds about half of the yardage a normal reel would wrap.
Okay, enough on equipment, hows about the fish!? Well, started out SLOOOOW. Took us about an hour to really get some action. After the sun popped out things picked up quickly. We landed too many to count and a few really good ones. Most all came on the nymph unless we were casting to the more shallow runs or pockets. This stream is a ton of fun and has some excellent pockets and pools. It also has a tremendous population of small trout, which will be great for years to come.
The highlight of the day came while Joey was working one of the largest pools on the creek. The pool had two definite runs, one of each side that spanned probably 40 feet. He just happened to see a nice fish rise and gave him an offering. And WHAM it was on like stink on a donkey. The bow was determined to give his TFO 3 weight a run for the money. I quickly said, "horse that sucker up or you'll be in that laurel." My advise was too late, so in the bush they went, rod dropped and line in hand. He managed him out untangled and realized that boss was crowding 10 inches and had the attitude of a detoxing metal head. A real pig for this tiny stream.
In the end we really did loose count and were surprised and some of the areas we pulled fish from. I even managed one between two blowdowns you couldn't even cast to, I simply eased the fly down, hooked a fish and hoisted him up. I've never had that kinda luck, no matter how big a horseshoe I haul in the back of the 'yota.
Our list of streams to fish continues to grow. I'm thankful for the time and opportunity so close to home.
Thanks for reading, now go catch a fish.
No comments:
Post a Comment