March 25, 2017 – Mentored Youth Day with the Boy – Wissahickon Creek

He is getting good!

I totally forgot that today was Mentored Youth Day in SEPA, that is until last night about 9 PM.  Without even clearing it with the boy, who was already in bed, I decided to go online and get a permit for the day, just in case.  I had a busy Saturday planned for me, but the stocking date for the Wissy down the street had been bumped up from March 28 to March 21, so even an open hour would be worth taking a walk if the opportunity presented itself.  In the morning, I had to drag my dad down to Kensington to pick up some refinished furniture that Tami purchased last week, and we were all planning to go to a birthday gathering for one of my nephews in the afternoon too.  Still, the boy and I were home by 1 PM (after I stopped for bánh mì, my new food obsession), and he was willing, so we took a short ride to the creek with the fly rod and the spinning rod and some water and Tic Tacs.

A  16 inch rainbow.

We only encountered one other dad and his two kids, who arrived at the same kid-friendly hole at the same time we did.  Before that, the boy tried to throw a Rapala in a hole closer to the parking spot, but he hung it in a tree.  I decided to put an olive bugger on the spinning rod with one split shot on the leader, and he had a lot of success in a short time.  I took the first cast in the honey hole while he was still coming down the muddy bank, and I hooked one immediately.  I handed him the rod, and he was on the board for Mentored Youth Day 2017.  After that, I stepped back and let him do his thing.  He is getting much better at casting and figuring out the right retrieve speed to keep the lures close enough to the bottom to get strikes. He's also getting the idea that a lure is supposed to look alive in the water.  He even remembers things we've talked about years ago, like how trout like the seams a lot of the time not the fast water and that they hang out around snags sometimes, so it's okay to get hung up once in a while.

14 inch bow on the bugger.

Before it started to rain, he picked up two more trout on the bugger, including a rainbow that was over 16 inches long!  After I got a snag out for him, I took one cast myself and hooked another one.  I handed him the rod, and he landed another nice fish of 14 inches or more.  After another minor snag, I asked to take another cast, and I was allowed to land a little smallmouth bass, which means water is already getting warmer than it usually is in late March.  By now the threatened rain started to come down, not heavy but enough make it less fun, so we ended the afternoon with 4 trout and a bass in an hour of fishing and walking.  I hope he realizes that it’s not always as easy as it has been the last two times we got out, but I am happy that we had success and proud that he was able to catch two fish completely on his own.  I am even proud of my recent ability to end the trip before I push the limits of his patience and our good times, important developments for both of us!