The Next Fish

For whatever reason, there was an area in the state that I've been wanting to get to for a long time, but it seems like I just can't make it happen. I'm sure it's only because of all the options closer to home that keep me from making the long drive, but this summer Jeff became curious about the same area and convinced me to make the effort. We decided to take our boys, Caden and Luke, with us (Atley had to work). 

When we arrived at Jeff's, we moved all our gear into his rig so we could drive to the lakes together. He also has a side-by-side that we'd be using on some of the notoriously bad roads. When we got to the first lake I found a fat rainbow pretty quickly. 

After catching that rainbow the fish at that lake all seemed unwilling to play our game, so we moved on to another lake. We took a hike that was steeper and longer than we expected to a group of lakes. Jeff caught a small tiger and I hooked into a fish that could've been huge but got tangled into some logs so quickly we'll never know. We didn't take nearly enough food or water with us, so we had to head back sooner than we would've liked but the hike was much easier on the way back down. 

The last lake of the evening held a bunch of brook trout and tiger trout. It was a lot of fun fishing to rising fish, so we stayed past dark. At first, they liked the Purple Frenchie, but as the night when on it seemed like we kept having to change flies to stay in the action. Wired Stones, Zebra Midges, Prince Nymphs, Purple Reign, Chironomids, Griffith's Gnat, Parachute Midge, and finally an Adams were all tried. The Adams was the answer to what they would take from the surface.

First thing in the morning we looked at another lake, but decided not to fish it since there wasn't really anywhere to cast a flyrod. Moved on to a bigger reservoir, but only saw a couple of fish w/o any feeding action. So we decided to hike to another lake, one that I've wanted to fish for a long time. The hike wasn't nearly as bad as the first one of the trip. Right away we found some cutts. The boys even managed to hook into some. Luke caught his first fish on a fly rod! 

We spent longer than we should've at the last lake which meant all that was left was to load up and head for home. We talked about other areas we should explore and made some plans for future trips, always looking ahead to the next trip, the next cast, the next fish. 

Hope you're as lucky,

Kidder