Walkabout

[Onslow]

It's been a spell since I've had any amount of time to myself for some exploring.  I tried a 1.8 mile section of this stream last year, and lost a fish that I really wanted to catch today.  I also wanted to test some more water downstream, so I added another 1.5 miles to today's effort.  Today, the take out would be on a piece of unposted private property 100 yds from the rd at the edge of a precipice.  Parked the truck at what appeared to be a random shoulder spot, hiked up the road a mile, walked through some more woods on private property to fish an undesignated stream pretty much in the middle of no damn where.  Stream flows all over the damn place.  The bends are good, the low gradient, not so much.




The damned creek was kinda miserable early on.  According to the USGS topo maps, the gradient was supposed to be more on this stretch than the previously explored stretch.  Lotta shin deep sucker water, then finally this.  Unfortunately some of the pretty spots down low were defiled by a vacation cabin, and a resort home.  I continued to fish on front of the occupied resort home as if weren't there, and caught my first bow.  This is supposed to be brown water.







Observed this fawn for a while.  It jumped into one of the few deep pools early on from the right side, and proceeded to groom itself in the water.  I managed to steal a pic after a bit.









Fishy in the water









Some major pullage today.  Knowing there some chunks in here, I used my bass leader/attached 3x, and used 4x for the trailer.  Big ole #12 prince was getting the bows worked up.  Took me a while to get this guy in the net.



This one was only 15.5"



Ended up with 9 bows, one smallmouth, one shiner, and about 100 suckers.  I'm not understanding the bow situation here.  Everywhere else, except for one creek/trib  10 miles downstream just has browns & brookies in the feeders.

3.3 miles of wading.  I still have my toe nails -0-

[Dee-Vo]

Glad to see you finally spend a little more time with that flow. You've been horny for that bitch forever.

Bow water for sure. Shit, you got the rod bent. Much better than time allowed me to do on my two days off of work. Nice work. That's some pretty water in the pics.

[Dougfish]

Nice Kenneth, nice.  Herr Sketchiness, rules.

[Big J]

Those fish will bend a fly rod. 

[troutfanatic]

I like your stonefly.