The wife and I are expecting our second child in about a month, so I told (asked) her I needed to get out for a last hurrah and some solitude before life gets hectic. She agreed, so I decided to hit up a different section of a river I fished on my birthday last year.
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LoginThere were a few vehicles at the pull off for the trail head when I got there, but I was hoping they'd just be hikers or backpackers. I started down the trail and realized I was following someone pretty closely based on their foot prints. Dang. So much for the solitude.
I figured I'd take a page out of some of y'all's books and actually take a picture of some plant life. I have no idea what it is, but they looked interesting.
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LoginGetting close now.
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LoginFinally here. I caught my largest wild brookie to date out of this hole last time I was here. I pulled three more out of it Saturday, but none of them rivaled the big one.
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LoginSadly that's the only fish pic of the day. They were voracious, and I hooked many but only got a few to hand. Of those few, most of them ended up back in the water before I could capture their resemblance. I hope you're ok with scenery pictures.
I was just upstream from where I got in when I caught some movement out of the corner of my eye while looking downstream. Another fisherman! b'; . He greeted me and proceeded to move above me. I was cursing him in my mind the whole time. I was hoping he'd move a ways up and give me some room, but he started fishing just a couple holes above me. Solitude officially ruined.
After a couple more holes, I decided it was time to pass him while he spent a lot of time on one large hole. As I approached him, he offered to let me try the hole he was working. He'd already pulled a few out of it, but I declined. We spoke for a few minutes, and he turned out to be pretty cool. They were actually his prints I'd been following on the trail. He just happened to enter the water farther downstream. He gave me a nymph he'd tied and we talked fishing for a bit. I decided to move on up well past him to give us some breathing room and thankfully didn't see another soul until returning to the truck.
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LoginThe sun had come out and it was warming up. I noticed the fish had slowed way down and the holes were pretty empty, from what I could see. I did stop to observe one hole and saw this guy down on the bottom feeding. Everything up to this point had been hitting my dry fly. I tied on the nymph the other fisherman had given me and let it drift past this guy a few times. He swiped and missed it twice. After each swipe he'd go under a little overhang for a minute before coming back out. I kept trying every time he'd come out. Finally, after a dozen drifts or so, he nailed it! He was a feisty thing and put up a good fight. Sadly, he flopped out of my hand, down the rock I was leaning against, and into the water where he stopped for a rest so I could snap a photo.
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Login I just knew this beautiful hole was going to be ripe with brookies, but I didn't see a single one, which was disappointing. I almost took a dive twice in this hole while trying to get around it. Thankfully it'd have been deep enough not to break my neck.
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LoginSorry USFS, no night rescues this time.
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LoginIt'll probably be spring by the time I can get back out, so I'll be living vicariously through you guys until then. Give me something good.