I remember my first day having a fly rod in my hand and
actually hooking and landing two small rainbows up under the damn, it was one
of the coolest experiences I had ever had. The next couple of times out I got
skunked and it felt much more like the way I had always fished. Every cast
would be preceded with a little prayer and bargain with God, come on God, if
you really loved me you would let me catch a fish…Oh well, it took a while and
a lesson from former friend and things began to click. Faster than I had
expected and the three fish days quickly became fifteen fish days. The cockiness
began to flow out of me like a damn springing a leak. I fished Grape creek a
lot and got to where I expected every day on the water to be a fifty plus fish
day. It probably didn’t help much when Cat caught the bug and wanted to kick my
tail and talk smack to me. We would almost run up the creeks side by side
throwing flies as fast as we could get them out of the fish’s mouths. I’m up to
78, Cat would say, and I would respond with you better pick up the pace, I’m at
92. Our stop at the end of the day would be at the Burger King in Cannon and as
we would get out of the car I would look at Cat and Brandon and tell them how
lucky they were that they would get to eat much quicker than me because it would
take a lot more time trying to wash all the extra fish smell from my hands…hehe.
Well all great
things change over time and the numbers game turned into the size game. Now the
smack talk is, I caught two 20’s and three 18’s, and Cat follows with I caught
a 21 and two 19’s, and of course my rebuttal is that actually the 20’s were
closer to 21. Big fish snobs we have become, until yesterday. Cat and I got to
the water at about 10:30a.m. We were hoping everyone would be watching the Bronco
game. We started just below the Nature Center and a few casts in I landed my
first of many 8 inch fish of the day. My next few fish were in the 2 and 3
inch range and then finally I landed about a fifteen incher. Fishing seemed
simple again; cast set and bring in the fish. Every riffle, rock cluster and
weir was full of fish, a couple of nice fish and then five or six absolutely
beautiful natural rainbows ranging from 2 to 12 inches. Cat was fishing the
spillway at City Park and when she caught up to me she smiled and said that “today
would be all about the numbers” and said she landed thirteen out of the
spillway. Brandon showed up and very first cast landed about a 13incher. I was
blown away by the color of the dinks yesterday, the river is actually
reproducing natural fish.(something to keep in mind while fishing to the beds
next spring). Well we exhaustedly made it back to Nature Center at about 4:30
and Cat told me the number she ended up with, and I turned, grinned and said I
stopped counting at ten after her number… Yep it was just like old times only we stopped at Subway instead of BK...
The fish were
feeding hard all day yesterday; my rig for the day was a True blood, a RS2 and
a cream size 24 midge at the end. It never seemed to matter, they were feeding.
The next 6 or 7 weeks should be the best fishing of the year I hope you get out
and enjoy this wonderful fishery here. It doesn’t matter if it’s numbers or
size that floats your boat; this is the place to be. As always, thanks for
reading, Connell
The Colors Dreams are made of........
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