We went up to one of our favorite spots last Saturday for some trout fishing. Out of respect to Dan, I don't disclose the location of this particular watershed.
While the water seemed particularly low thanks to the lack of rain we've had, the weather was beatiful. This particular stream will slap wear you out after a day of fishing, but at least we had the stream all to ourselves. The action for the day was slow, as there were more smallmouth bass than trout. We caught a few smallmouths and trout, mostly on artificial lures and my homemade brown trout streamer.
Most of the fish were quite small, but we had two near misses. One was on about my third or fourth cast on my prototype Perfect Fly brand fly rod, which we hope to have available on the site in the first quarter of 2011. An approximately 2 lb smallie came out of nowhere from a crevice in the floor of the stream and hit my streamer. Though I set the hook, the fish was able to wiggle off and slowly swim out away from shore, as if he didn't want to let anyone know he was hurt.
The second near miss (shown in the video below) came about after I cast the same fly near a rock overhanging the water just off the main current. An approximately 24" trout came out, stopped, looked at the fly, and abruptly thought better of it. I put the rod down, picked up the video camera, and asked Matthew to cast his lure near the rock. This time the big guy came out, hit the lure, and Matthew hooked him briefly before the trout got the last laugh and hid under the rock. The good news is, we know where he lives.