The Draw of the Dry

The rule about drive time to fishing time ratio can be compromised when you plan to drive to the river with a friend. The transportation becomes something more valuable then - conversation and fellowship. So, despite the fact that we had only 2.5 hours to fish, we opted to drive to some trout water ~50 minutes away. We hoped to walk into some rising fish. The main goal was to get my neighbor into some fish on his specially-crafted reel (see pic below). He's got so many cool Bogden, etc. reels I can't recall exactly the story on this one. I do know that the guy went out to the east coast to meet Bogden and his family, and while out there he MADE a reel for himself, alongside one of the classic reel-makers. Whichever of the line of beauties this reel is, it hadn't connected with a trout until Sunday - see rainbow below.

Other than that, the main highlight on the water was the intrigue with respect to the hatches we encountered: one large mayfly - I believe march brown - was clearly on the water, but not in big numbers. A pale yellow, smaller mayfly was out in pretty good force. There is some question now that suggests it may have been a sulphur, which according to the local folks would be a pretty rare and notable occurrence. Apparently the true sulphur hatch "disappeared" years back. Folks are examining pics now - maybe verdict soon. Anyway - it was tough to get the rising fish to eat. There were plenty of rising fish though. While my neighbor was rigging up, I walked down to the stream and put my first cast on a riser. My big, brown mayfly patter landed right next to a natural. I had then a rare opportunity to see clearly both a real bug and my imitation... I watched a brown slowly turn up and choose the fly over the bug. Pretty cool. That image kind of burned in my mind. Coincidentally, that fish is smoking in my backyard right now.

The short story is we didn't get a hell of a lot of takes. We missed some fish and caught some fish. Didn't really have time to nymph. Left the stream content, and sipped some hot coffee on the way home. There in time for a couple rounds of Candyland.