Thursday, August 18, 2011

Best trout of my season... so far

Title says it all!  Tonight, well I guess technically yesterday I  landed the biggest trout of my season so far.  I got out to the river at about 6:50pm and the midges were hatching.  To start things off I lost two fish and then (unfortunately) another fisherman shows up and instead of walking to the next hole he decides to fish it as well.  I'm sitting there casting size 20-24 midges at the rising trout and this guy is throwing his spinner practically on top of my flies!  The fish didn't like it too much either and the risers seemed to get spooked.  I still managed to get a few chubs to rise and take my fly.  Right as is was getting dark out the other man left leaving me alone for the night bite.  I started out throwing wooly buggers and clousers with a few hits, but no hook-ups.  Then from out of the depths right in front of me a huge trout appears and basically rubbed it's nose on my wooly bugger, and then sank back down.  I quickly changed colors from black to white and kept bringing it past where the fish was holding.  After changing from streamer to streamer I finally moved the fish again and once again he sank back down after "nosing" my fly.  A while later at about 9:40pm I noticed something moving under the surface in front of me.  I turned on my head lamp and saw the fish again, it looked like it was feeding on something about 6 inches below the surface, so i quickly tied on a san juan worm and an emerger/attractor sort of nymph that I tie,  i've had some pretty good luck on them earlier in the season,  I decided I would cast to the fish if i saw it again and sure enough about two minutes later i saw it.  I casted about 5 feet in front of the fish and let it dead drift.  Nothing.  I start to swing the nymph up preparing for a re-cast and right before my bottom fly hits the surface I get a hit!  The fish started thrashing about on the surface and then took several powerful runs.  Did I mention I was using a 1wt. with 5x tippet?  I thought that there was no way that I was going to get the fish in.  The fish seemed to use most of it's energy on the first two runs and after a couple more short runs I netted the beauty.  I had a little trouble with the net because the fish was just as big as the entire net!  I do wish i could say that my net was 28 inches long, or 25, or even 23. But at 19.5 inches I'm excited to say that this is the biggest trout I've caught this season, and the largest trout I've ever caught in Wisconsin.

that little rod makes the fish look huge!

The pictures don't do the fish justice as far as colors go.

swam away to fight another day!
The fly that made it happen.



9 comments:

  1. That fly is nice and buggy. Good Job.

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  2. Yea that's the same spot! Theres some really nice fish in there.

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  3. Great trout and blog. Thank you for following mine. I look forward to reading about your adventures.

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  4. Thanks Kev! So far i've enjoyed seeing all the fish you've been catching on a fly rod. I still have yet to catch a catfish on mine!

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  5. Nice blog Blake. I'm a DTA member as well!
    John

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  6. John: I like DTA quite a bit, a lot of good stories and tips there as well!

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  7. Awesome Rainbow. NIce job on landing it on the 1wt. Great looking fly as well. Night time is the beez kneeez. Tight Lines.

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  8. The night is indeed the beez kneez haha, fish seem much more likely to hit, even in the most popular areas on the stream

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  9. Unbelievable colors on those fish. what a catch

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