We made our annual New Year's Day pilgrimage to a trout stream yesterday, and despite the cold, it was a successful day. I met Mr. Q. and Mike early in the afternoon and the first thing we had to do was find a spot on the river where there was room to fish. Usually, we have the river mostly ourselves, even when the weather is fairly warm. This year there were quite a few anglers on the water, many of them trying to catch Bubba, a big brown trout with a jaw tag that was stocked somewhere in a roughly two mile stretch of river by Shannon's Fly Shop a couple of weeks ago along with a few hundred "smaller" trout.
It wasn't like the river was crowded, it wasn't at all. Most of the anglers we saw were in the few more popular spots, so we didn't really have much of a problem finding a good stretch of water that had plenty of room for the three of us. It also wasn't like we would be casting dries on flat water to rising fish, so we weren't too choosy about where we fished. Our goal was to catch the first fish of the year before we froze our butts off, and so we spent the afternoon casting big, weighted woolly buggers and retrieving them slowly in short, even strips.
Here Mr. Q shows us how its done....how to pose like a pro.
Every so often we needed to stop fishing and pop the ice out of our guides so we could resume casting. It wasn't a big deal, just part of the process when you are fishing in temperatures that are below the freezing mark. The white stuff is ice that has accumulated around the guides....
And then of course, there is the payoff. I caught my first fish of the year, a nice 15 inch brook trout that fought hard and quickly swam away after it was released. A short while later I took a nice rainbow out of the same hole. Mike also got his first fish of the year, a huge, fat rainbow that was likely stocked by Shannon's recently. That pig is also back in the water to be caught another day by another lucky angler. Here's my brookie just before being released.
So we are off to a good start this year. We fished on the first of the year, caught a few, and had a good time fishing with good friends.
Sharpen your hooks.
It wasn't like the river was crowded, it wasn't at all. Most of the anglers we saw were in the few more popular spots, so we didn't really have much of a problem finding a good stretch of water that had plenty of room for the three of us. It also wasn't like we would be casting dries on flat water to rising fish, so we weren't too choosy about where we fished. Our goal was to catch the first fish of the year before we froze our butts off, and so we spent the afternoon casting big, weighted woolly buggers and retrieving them slowly in short, even strips.
Here Mr. Q shows us how its done....how to pose like a pro.
Every so often we needed to stop fishing and pop the ice out of our guides so we could resume casting. It wasn't a big deal, just part of the process when you are fishing in temperatures that are below the freezing mark. The white stuff is ice that has accumulated around the guides....
And then of course, there is the payoff. I caught my first fish of the year, a nice 15 inch brook trout that fought hard and quickly swam away after it was released. A short while later I took a nice rainbow out of the same hole. Mike also got his first fish of the year, a huge, fat rainbow that was likely stocked by Shannon's recently. That pig is also back in the water to be caught another day by another lucky angler. Here's my brookie just before being released.
So we are off to a good start this year. We fished on the first of the year, caught a few, and had a good time fishing with good friends.
Sharpen your hooks.
4 comments:
I'm really not that fat...I had my gloves shoved in the front of my jacket;) Fun day. Just for the record...I got skunked!
Gloves?? I thought you were keeping your worms warm in there.
Contrasts in the world of Trout:
My first day of the season was in awful heat (90 deg F), up a river valley that hasn't been fished in ...hell, who knows, maybe 20 years.., with no human in sight for 10 hours, with the river in spate, and snakes in the grass, and one 12 inch Brown to the net.
Gloves...? OK..stick with that story. :)
Here's to many more good days in 2014.
Good to hear from you trutta. Happy New Year! Sounds like a cool spot, too bad the conditions weren't better. When you get hog, send us pic and we'll post it. Best, Matt
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