I fished the Soho Saturday with Glassfisher. We had planned on this after the Florida vacations, since I missed out on some salt fishing Glass was going to show me. He wanted to fish the flats in some lagoon.
Anyways, I planned to get up early Saturday morning around 4:30am and started to get my gear ready. I checked the local TN weather and said cold and rainy. The temp in the car said 21 deg, and it was damn cold. I met up with glass at our designated meeting point around 6:00 am and snapped a pic of the overhead temp gage...still 21 degs.(http://216.77.188.54/coDataImages/p/Groups/339/339056/folders/261914/2369779IMGP1877.JPG)
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I transferred my gear into glasses car and we headed out to the river. We arrived on the river at 8:00am and started to set up. I had a new fly I wanted to try out, it was a size 22 red midge similar to the juju bee midge, just red thread body with mono rib, and pearl wing case and legs.
Glass headed down stream, and I went up stream to fish a slow run with the new fly.
I managed a coupe of small browns and bows, there colors were beautiful.
Later around noon, we moved down river to another spot that looked promising.
We fished riffles and runs catching some nice browns and rainbows. Then the snow starting coming down. We had been fighting ice in the guides all morning, and it looked like the same for the rest of the afternoon. My hands were getting numb and the pain was increasing by the minute.(http://216.77.188.54/coDataImages/p/Groups/339/339056/folders/261914/2369781IMGP1880.JPG)
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But I notice a boulder in the middle of the river that made two distinct seams, one on each side.
This time I had changed my fly's( even though I could barely feel the fly pinched between my fingers) to a size 18 red bead head zebra midge and dropped a size 20 bwo emerger off that fly about 20". The water was faster so I wanted the dropper fly farther away from the first fly to get a natural drift in the currents. I cast the fly upstream of the boulder about 10ft and watched in anticipation the indicator move towards the structure. Just before the boulder the indicator was pulled hard and I set the hook. I was lucky to have about 15 feet of fly line out of the reel and down at me knees. This fish took of like a rocket, and I pinched the line to slow it down some, bit eventually got it on the reel. The fish pulled about 60 feet of line out and was still on the move.
I decided to move down stream with the fish keeping tension on the line. Every time I got close or made up ground on this fish it ran another 30ft or so. After a few minutes and with the help of glass who saw me fighting this fish and offered a helping hand. We netted the fish and it was a very nicely colored brown. Glass took a shot of it with his camera, we tapped it at 22" and released to fish back into the water. It immediately broke up stream in a hurry.
It was a good fight.
Later in the afternoon, I got a chance to payback glass, by netting a big brown he was fighting in the shallow currents and riffles. This fish had fought him around 50 yards down stream to my location. I snapped a quick picture of it with Glasses camera and released the fish to watch it run upstream back to its lair.
Around 4:00 pm a bwo hatch was on. We saw at watched a small cripple try to make it off the water in a slow pool. The snow was coming down heavy by then but the bwo's were determined. It was one of the coolest observations of nature I have seen in a while.
We fished until 5:15pm and managed a few more rainbows and browns. It was a perfect day to be out on the water, and we ended it in our usual ritual, a cold beer.
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It took about 45 minutes for me to warm up my body core temp, that I'm sure dropped a few degrees. It never got about freezing and the car temp gage told us so.
On a side note. I have the pentex optio and the battery looses charge or the camera thikns it does in cold temperatures. The camera was charged and during some pic's it the camera said low battery and shut itself off. When we got back into the car and things warmed up, the camera worked fine and the batter indicator icon said I had two full bars left. Does any else see this with the pentex optio camera?
Nice job...I mean yall suck, ya redd stomppin' bastages hehehehehe
Kim 8)
Batteries don't like cold weather do they. Just put camera in underwear to keep it warm.... ///?
Nice day ya'll had TP, ive been trying to tie up some of those juju b"s. As for the batteries, ive always heard to put batteries in the refrigerator to keep them, but dont know how it works for newer batteries. Just keep your camera next to your nuts ( not the ones walt sent you) thats the warmest place on the body. ;D
yeah, you guys just plain out and out suck!
Yeah! What Kieth said!
Y'all are too hard core for me. Ice in the guides is a sign from above that it's time to go home :o
The Olympus doesn't take as good pictures, but at least it don't fizzle out in the snow. ;D It was a good day, not a lot of fish, but the all good quality. Here's some pics of the big brownies we landed and a parting shot for the day... boos and brews! 0--0 Cheers!
Thats some pretty budda your holding ;hb Love winter fishing!
awesome pics glass!
I like that last pic best.......brews and boo!..... 0--0
Although a cold beer was the last thing I needed.....he he he he
I'm going to be filling the flask with some single malt for the next winter trip and leave the beer home.
I'm thinking hot clamato and vodka in the thermos for Thurs' trip to soho...gonna be another chilly one I'm afraid..nice report -
Those are some super pretty browns.
STU
What golden - butter browns.
those brown pics sure are nice.