Short Trip

The boys and I are on spring break this week! Too bad Del isn't and we've had to spend a bunch of money the last few days for the upcoming move. That means staying close to home and doing everything as low budget as possible. For the first few days of the break I stayed home, tied flies, and listened to the rain outside. That just made my back hurt and my cabin fever reach dangerous levels. Today the sun was shining and the trout were calling. 

The initial plan was to take the DSLR camera and try shooting some video of the boys fishing. Didn't realize that I'd forgotten the SD card until we were already on the stream. Oh well, there will be other days to shoot video. The water was a bit high and a little off color so Atley tried a black woolly bugger to start. 

Surprisingly, the fish weren't interested in the bugger so I threw a dry dropper rig at them. On top I had a pink Indicator Chernobyl and hung a flash back Hare's Ear down below. I was just about to hand Atley the rod when the ant went under and it was fish on. Soon a solid fish was in hand.

Not sure what put the huge hole in her back, but if it was a fish I'd like to meet him. With that in mind I handed Atley the rod (Caden wasn't too interested today) and hoped that there was another fish in the pool. Several casts later without any luck and I started thinking about getting down a little deeper. So I added some tippet below the Hare's Ear and tied a San Juan Worm on. Took a cast to make sure it wasn't going to be a constant tangle before handing it to Atley and of course a fish decided to take it. Right away I knew this was a really solid fish that was pretty insistent on staying at the bottom of the pool. Once I coaxed him out with as much pressure as my little 4wt fiberglass rod and the 6x tippet would allow we saw that he was a big fish. We had to follow him down to the next pool and hope that the connection would stay through a couple of good leaps and runs. Luckily, Atley is a great net man and he got as much of the fish that would fit into the net!

The boys and I were all pretty excited about this beauty and Atley called first dibs on the next hole. Didn't take him long to get his own fish to hand, and while it wasn't a hog I was pretty proud of how independent of a fisherman he's become. 

Seeing how we had done it, Caden wanted his turn and I tried to help him as much as possible. Once we had a fish hooked, all he wanted to do was be the net man and he did a great job.

The boys realized how hungry they'd become despite us only being on the stream for an hour or so, and I knew that no matter what I said they had decided it was time to go home. So we headed back home with memories made in a short trip. 

Hope you're as lucky,

Kidder