After avoiding the April first opener for a slew of reasons, none of which are surprising. Like a fool in April I opted to fish for a few hours on the first weekend of the season opener. Not really foolish, but it was just a brief outing to wet the line if you will. The conditions around here are a bit troublesome. The groundwater table is replenishing, but the surface runoff from spring is mostly non-existent. Thus making the majority of the streams in the area pretty low and clear. I picked a local put and take stocker-hunters paradise verses the lake run tributary zoo. I arrived at the pull off to a warm 45 degrees, strong winds, newly posted signs, and only two cars. I hopped down the bank and found that the other anglers were upstream of where I wanted to be….perfect! I started swing small streamers. I was ready for the assault of freshly stocked browns to attack, but it didn’t happen. Swing after swing turned to drift after drift as I started downsizing my fly choice. Then it became apparent that they hadn’t stocked this section yet. Then my mind went to holdover trout and the fly selection went to large flowing-hackle-articulated-streamers. As I approached a known section to hold fish, I focused on the swing with astute attention. I was contemplating moving to another stream due to the lack of online entertainment. Then about mid-belly in the swing the unweighted prototype streamer was thrashed and a splash disrupted the surface flow, but no hook up. That sealed the deal for me, I was staying and pressing on. A little further down the pool, there was another thrashing below the surface and a solid hook up on my prototype articulated streamer (yes, there is a future post coming related to this). I was excited since this was sure to be the first trout of 2013 for me and it had some fight to it.
The excitement was short lived when I spotted the large cyprinidae scaling of a monster fallfish. These fish still make me laugh because they can be fun to catch, but when caught at the wrong time, they deflate the morale balloon. Still was I was happy that the fish liked the fly and the line on my swing was tight for the first time in 2013. After the release I went back to swinging and covering a ton of water.
I turned the remaining time into an exploration mission and discovered new to me areas for future warmwater fishing pursuits. I put the camera to use on my surroundings.
Canned Corn...nourishment for meth heads or crack for trout? Either way you lose.
Til the next!
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