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| Pretty close to making a new friend. |
My day ended with the very unique experience of coming
face to face with a whitetail fawn, still unsteady on her legs. I could have reached out and touched the little
thing, honesty! She was going to walk
right into me like she thought I was mom for a second until she caught a whiff,
I suppose. I was able to get two
pictures too, which is strange because I couldn’t get a fish to pose to save my
life. It was not a bad day; in fact, it
was a great day if it wasn’t for the constant yin and yang. I hooked 3 fish in the first fifteen minutes just
killing time while it got light enough to wade a deeper stretch I intended to
target, but there were really slow times too.
It was a cold morning, but a hot afternoon. I had fun, and fished a good long time with
no other anglers in sight, but I also would have like to have been home by 1 PM
as I had planned.
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| One of 6 landed of a dozen hooked.... |
Every positive had a negative and every negative had a
positive: I hooked at least 12 fish, but I only landed 6 of them, and I only
got a picture of the one to the left, the second of the morning, and even that one was
a little blurry. I saw one of the
biggest wild browns I have seen in a long time rising to caddis, even my
caddis, but it refused my offering twice before I put him down. The list goes on and on. I hooked a great holdover rainbow early in
the morning, and I lost him after the third or fourth leap, a couple of them 4
feet in the air. I went back to the spot
for some redemption before I left, and likely hooked the same fish a second time,
and he proceeded to take me deep into his lair pictured below. He hung around a sunken limb, and I just gave
him even pressure. I even sneaked around
to net him, confident he was still on the line, just hung up, but he was gone. I got both flies back though. Speaking of which, I didn’t hang up much at
all, but I Iost two pricey streamers, one in a tree, and one on a violent
strike downstream. The fish that jumped
shortly thereafter, trying to throw my muddler, would have been a nice fish had
I not broken him off.
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| Two shots at him, and I blew it both times. |
Another time, I caught a solid rainbow in a great hole I
never even knew existed, but then the next cast looped two flies around the
tree he, and probably his friends, were hiding under in the high sun. I ruined the hole, when I said screw it and
went to retrieve my flies, but I gained two more hand-tied nymphs when I
retrieved mine. Obviously, the last guy
didn’t want to ruin the hole, like me, for a couple flies. I even landed a decent wild brown who escaped
a photoshoot, but another one leaped right into me in tight pocket water and
got off because I had no chance of keeping him tight with all the jumping and a
barbless dropper. Ying and yang all day,
good and bad, relaxing and frustrating. I
already check gauges and weather, and now I guess I have to check my horoscope
before fishing. Something was up today.
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| Another shot of my buddy. |
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| I love pocket water this time of year. |
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