Friday, December 18, 2009

bad knee, bad neck, good fishing

Saturday : trout day - after putting up with pain from a badly arthritic knee and a C-7 neck nerve for over a month, I decided to throw caution to the wind and test my body on the waters of the Spring River.  My neighbor Blake and I set out Saturday morning around 7 AM and made it to my friend Art's place on the river by 10 AM.  The water was about 6" higher than normal and  a little cloudy - and this means faster and more trickier to navigate the rock bottom.  I pulled my wading staff out and ventured very slowly into the stream having nightmares about stepping into a hole and screwing up my knee again, but by walking very slowly, I managed to get to the "rock" in the middle of the stream and cast an olive woolly bugger to see if trout were hungry - and they were.  I had decided to use a sinking tip line for the first tiem and it was very apparent to me that I needed a lot of practice with sink lines and streamers because I managed to hook and loose more fish that I netted.  Also, the 27" trout that had bewen caught and released just a week earlier was nowhere to be found.  To add insult and misery, it started to drizzle - didi I say that it was about 34 degrees also? after getting tired of loosing flies and remembering to keep the rod tip up stupid!!, I switched to my floating line (this gave me an excuse to slowly get out of the weather and down a cup of java offred by Arts wife, Ms. Pat - God bless her.)  Went down into the stream again armedwith my floating line and my other go to fly - the much maligned Y2K - but what the hell, trout loved it and the fishing picked up since the rod tip up thing was firmly in my brain now.  Only regret that while trying to pull my net from the back of my vest, I bumped my brand new MSFF hat into the river.  Hope someone down river finds it and puts it to good use. Now to the best part of the trip.
Sunday - smallmouth bass day: Blake wanted to go after smallies on Sunday by our friend Tom's place (or what is left of it after the 2008 flood took everything but the slab away.) Water looked high and there were some serious holes, deep holes around a large shelf. I wimped out and told Blake I would just hang out and watch him - that is, until he made his first cast and nailed a 12" smallie - that was it, the hell with the knee, I suited up in record time and dragged my crappy knee unto the shelf in front of a big hole.  Out came the sinking line again, had to get the fly down deep for the fish, and proceeded to catch my fist small mouth bass ever.  What a trip!  those buggers hit the fly and take off like gangbusters.   The day ended with me  tagging a 15" fat smallie that I had to coax from under the shelf so I could net him.  I had pictures of me tripping and going into 6 ft deep water but luck prevailed and I bagged my fish.  I am hooked on this critters now and can't wait till spring top hit the Southfork and go after bigger smallmouth.  Weird also is that I pulled a rainbow out of the same hole, which people say can't survive this far down on the river - well Mr. rainbow must not know this or is like me, and gets lost easily.

Hey like Rob http://rob-abadbackcastandotherinanemusings.blogspot.com/ my blogging friend says, I have gone over to the "dark side" of smallmouth fishing but I just say that this just a new variation of my addiction to catching what I can with a fly rod.  Keep your lines tight!!!