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| Keystone Select, TCO fingerling who's lived well, wild? A 19 inch beauty of a brown. |
I have been itching to test out my new 10 foot 4 weight
rod an a big stream, so I packed up my stuff last night in case I felt
motivated and rested enough to get up at 5 AM and drive out to the Tully. I was up before the alarm, so it was a
go. I arrived about 6:40 AM, just before
sunrise, and was suited up and making my first casts before 7 AM. It was much colder than Saturday and getting
colder because the wind pick up as the dawn broke. The water temp was 42 degrees, likely from
snow melt and excess water in the reservoir.
I checked gauges on Saturday night and, while high, the creek was not
blown out. It was chocolatey, but it was
in its banks for the most part.
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| Sam's roberdeau strikes again |
Even though the water was cold, I was rigged up to fish a
streamer, so I started with that. I had
one come up and miss it near the end of my ten foot rod, but I got nothing but
a splash for the effort. I decided to
dead drift the streamer instead, and not long after, I hooked a pig of 19
inches that was hot! He jumped, ran,
feigned like he was ready for landing twice, but he finally landed in my
net. I got a couple shots of the mighty
roberdeau streamer in his jaws and let him go. I am not sure if he was a Keystone Select
fish, a “TCO Select” who’s grown up in the creek, or a wild one. It was the kind of conditions where tricking
a wild one was very possible, but I didn't look closely until I saw the pictures at home later, which are inconclusive... A pretty fish at any rate and likely an old holdover.
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| This one is clearly a Keystone Select fish, a good 20 inches and close to 5 pounds, I bet! |
About 10 minutes later, I sunk the hook into another
fish, and this one was a 20 inch football.
This fish was undoubtedly a product of the Keystone Select program, an
outsized, though pretty clean, breeder, half as wide as he was long. He ate the streamer; just a few strands of
flash were peeking out of his mouth. He
didn’t have the juice that the first one had, but on a 4 weight in fast water,
it was a handful to land just on weight alone. After letting
this one go, and talking to young Eric for a bit on the phone, I kept working
upstream. I was shocked the next deep
eddy and the seams around it did not produce.
I pushed the limits of the roberdeau’s depth seeking and hung it up, the
only one like it I had with me… Sam is
sending more out soon, but today, I had to try a variety of buggers and
muddlers.
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| Just some flash sticking out of his mouth. |
I had no love shown to the other steamers, even when
adding a big shot to get them down, so I took a break at my vehicle, and
re-rigged to nymph, the true test of the new rod. I also found my fingerless gloves and a
warmer buff. It was getting colder as
the day progressed! Slowly but surely, I
was joined by the usual heavy traffic that is customary for the Tully on a
weekend, but I managed to sneak into the some good nymphing water to finish out
the day with 4 or 5 more, including a hot, 15 inch rainbow and another little
brown. I had to use a lot of weight in
addition to a mop fly as the anchor, but I was able to get a soft hackle
pheasant tail down in the strike zone. I
even put the 10 foot to work and hooked two way out near the other bank, just
because I could… I think I am going to
like the extra foot, especially on the Tully, the Lehigh, the Brodhead, not to
mention Penns and the Pine! This is not
solely a Czech nymphing rod, so it was crisp enough to heave a streamer and a
heavy nymph rig with ease. I would say
it passed its first tests with at least and B+/A-, especially for a 200 dollar
rod.
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| And a 15 inch rainbow to end a good, but chilly morning. |
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