jamisonace
My wife needed to take a group of teenage girls on an overnight camp out in preparation for a week long camp they'll be doing in a couple weeks. She asked me if I would come along for support and of course I obliged.
It needed to include a hike so I knew of a place I love to hike and fish and we planned it for yesterday. After we got camp set up we headed up the trail for the hike. We ended up only doing about 5 miles but it was a fun hike with plenty of opportunity for us to cool off in a great little creek in the Mckenzie drainage.
I noted that it is one of the most picturesque streams I've seen but when I asked my wife for the camera she mentioned that we didn't bring one....bummer! Not only a bummer for then but for the fish story that would happen later that evening.
So we got back to camp and I got the fly rod out and started putting things together. I mentioned to my wife's friend who had joined us, that this river (not the stream we hiked on) was the source of the largest redside trout I'd ever caught. This is surpising because this is pretty small water. I only had about 30 minutes to fish so I headed to the river to wet a fly and noticed a few bugs flying around. I matched the bugs the best I could with an adam's pattern and within a few minutes was hooked into a nice 13" fish. I fished that pattern for a few more minutes with only strikes and no hook ups. I noticed a stonefly hit the water and get demolished by a trout a little smaller than what I had caught. So I quickly changed flys and started thowing a size 10 orange caddis into the riffles. First cast a large fish hit but missed. Second cast the fly floated out of the riffle and about 10 feet down from the riffle I see a massive shadow come racing out of the riffle and explode on my fly. Within seconds I knew I had something special. Line screaming runs, jumping like crazy, hard head shakes under the surface. I was playing it really softly because I was using 6x tippet. In the end, the line held and I put a 16" redside in my hand. The second biggest redside I've caught.
After two more casts I realized I was completely satisfied and wouldn't be topping that fish so I headed back to camp with a great story but no photo.
It needed to include a hike so I knew of a place I love to hike and fish and we planned it for yesterday. After we got camp set up we headed up the trail for the hike. We ended up only doing about 5 miles but it was a fun hike with plenty of opportunity for us to cool off in a great little creek in the Mckenzie drainage.
I noted that it is one of the most picturesque streams I've seen but when I asked my wife for the camera she mentioned that we didn't bring one....bummer! Not only a bummer for then but for the fish story that would happen later that evening.
So we got back to camp and I got the fly rod out and started putting things together. I mentioned to my wife's friend who had joined us, that this river (not the stream we hiked on) was the source of the largest redside trout I'd ever caught. This is surpising because this is pretty small water. I only had about 30 minutes to fish so I headed to the river to wet a fly and noticed a few bugs flying around. I matched the bugs the best I could with an adam's pattern and within a few minutes was hooked into a nice 13" fish. I fished that pattern for a few more minutes with only strikes and no hook ups. I noticed a stonefly hit the water and get demolished by a trout a little smaller than what I had caught. So I quickly changed flys and started thowing a size 10 orange caddis into the riffles. First cast a large fish hit but missed. Second cast the fly floated out of the riffle and about 10 feet down from the riffle I see a massive shadow come racing out of the riffle and explode on my fly. Within seconds I knew I had something special. Line screaming runs, jumping like crazy, hard head shakes under the surface. I was playing it really softly because I was using 6x tippet. In the end, the line held and I put a 16" redside in my hand. The second biggest redside I've caught.
After two more casts I realized I was completely satisfied and wouldn't be topping that fish so I headed back to camp with a great story but no photo.
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