Tuesday, April 8, 2014

Fresh, Dumb, & Willing


On a 3rd annual fishing trip to celebrate my good friend Austin's birthday, we found ourselves riverside after an all night drive west to the land of stocked bows. It was the last weekend in March and the fish were freshly stocked, incredibly dumb, and willing to be caught more than once…




The stockers provided a good amount of entertainment while the intermittent holdover and wild brown trout kept us honest. For my best friend Patrick, who is relatively new to the sport, it afforded him a chance to fish a switch rod and work on his dead drifts without being penalized too much. Its been awesome to watch his progress over the past two years, especially with his ability to fight a fish and properly handle one. Austin fished with a single hander and threw streamers and nymph rigs all day. He got quite jealous of either of us using switch rods and routinely picked up our rigs to catch a fish. With the stockers extra willing, I fished a 350 gr. Rio Skagit Max Short on a Loop S1 6110-5 all day. I had pretty consistent action on the swing or stripping flies as I thoroughly enjoyed my sustained anchors and casts.

Our day could be broken into parts based on weather conditions and fishing success. In the morning,  temperatures were in the mid-thirties and it was raining consistently. The fishing was slow with only a few fish coming to hand. As the rain began to stop, the wind picked and the temperatures increased. Things got a little more interesting, with all the brown trout giving chase under heavy cloud cover. The afternoon featured partly cloudy skies and warm weather that had us shedding layers. This was the best period of fishing and we began nailing the stocker bows and even saw a few fish rise.  We hiked back to our vehicle with a few hours of light to spare. We had to find a camping area, set up our tents, and start a fire as day two offered a completely different venue.

Stay tuned...


Stacking, Stacking, and Dead Drifting into the Zone... 




This brown followed my swung streamer into a soft seam before committing...


One of many 18-22 stocker bows...



Beautiful brown...



Pat was pumped...


350 gr. Rio Skagit Max Short...


Loop Cross S1 Travel Series 6110-5
Multi 6/9



Good Looking Holdover...


Crushed on the swing...



Looking like a 12 yr. old...




Looking like an Alaskan leopard bow...




Quite the windy day...


Greed.



Ambition.




Gratuitous.



Bombed a cast, kicked a mend, let her swing…
Crushed it. 





Sloppy seconds for Pat an hour after I caught him…
No idea at the time, but the spots match up in the pictures.



Working it. 



1 comment:

RM Lytle said...

Fun, gotta love them gullible bows!