Day of Discovery

I am happy to report that I am really starting to get the hang of this fly fishing thing.  I met up with Toby this morning and we decided to fish a section of river that neither one of us had ever explored before.  Fishing new water with a good friend is probably one of my favorite things.  It ranks somewhere between "brown paper packages tied up with strings" and "girls in white dresses with blue satin sashes".

Toby knows his way around a trout stream.  If there had been a trout hanging out in that run he would have caught it.  Much of the search for trophy trout involves exploring waters with ridiculously low numbers of trout.  The trout that do survive tend to be large.  It's a risk and reward scenario that a lot of guys can't handle.  Those that hit home runs always have their fair share of strikeouts.  We were swinging for the fences today.

The hours went by fast but the action was close to non-existent.  I was suspicious that the low water temperature was having a serious affect on the trout activity.  I kicked my myself for not replacing my broken thermometer with one that works.  It is on the to do list for this week.  Toby reported a few follows and strikes but I hadn't seen or felt a fish for hours.  We should have went to the Kinni.

 Another promising looking pool with no sign of trout.  I lost count on how many times I had switched streamers.  Even Old Yeller wasn't working today.

Looking through my streamer box I was running out of options.  Then I noticed Old Stupid, probably one of the dumbest looking streamers in my box.  Old Stupid is no slouch though he has assisted me in the capture of many trout.  I don't know why but this streamer just works.  A variation of it was my top performing streamer of the 2014 campaign.  I had tied this about a year ago and forgotten about it.  It was time to give Old Stupid his chance.  I tossed him into the top of a run right along the current seam and let him sink. One, two, three, four, five I counted.  I forgot what number comes after five so I began a slight jig/strip retrieve and then she hit.  She hit so hard.  I can't remember the words that came out of my mouth but I made it clear to Toby that there was a large fish at the end of my line.  I hauled her in quickly and could tell she was sluggish with the water being as cold as it was.

"There you see her.  Sitting there in your net.  She don't got a lot to say but there's something that you'll never forget."

 I was so happy.

Toby got a nice pic with his Go Pro.  I haven't figured out if the Go Pro affect is real or not.  Some folks seem to think that photographing trout with a Go Pro makes them appear bigger than they actually are.  I'm not so sure anymore.  

That ended up being the only fish landed between the two of us but just because the action is slow it doesn't mean that cool stuff can't continue to happen.  What is that?

 "Rubber Ducky, you're the one.  You make bath time so much fun.  Rubber ducky I'm awfully fond of you.".  Bath time is going to be so much fun tonight I can tell you that.