It's been a busy few weeks yet between work, family, building rods, and tying flies I managed to get out a few precious times. Weather has been rough on the trout recently with air temps in the 90's and flash flood conditions on a few local streams.
This rod is one of the few that kept me off the streams. It's available now at Whitewater Valley Flies. It's a 9ft 4wt built on a fast tip blank. I took it out in the yard and again I really want to keep it! Only $175.00! I also found a great deal on a kit so I purchased it and scratch the hell out of the blank while working on it. Rather than sell it I decided I'd keep it as a streamer/big hopper rod. It's a 9ft 6wt built on a medium/fast blank. I took that one out last night and although I only had 5 wt line it cast pretty darn well!
After fishing with this rod I purchased another of the same setup which should be available within a few weeks. If anyone has any interest in having a custom rod built hit me up!
Unfortunately the last couple times I've fished it's been shortly after some strong rains. On this day the stream was running high and muddy. I fished a small streamer and landed a number of averaged sized browns.
I spotted a few rings in a wide, deep pool and cast a cream colored comparadun mayfly pattern at it. The fly disappeared and I set the hook. At first it seemed like I hooked a log. A few seconds after the hook set I could tell that I had something, not a fish though. As I pulled it near this is what I saw!
A dinner sized snapping turtle breached the surface a few times before I snapped the line. My first snapper on the fly! It was my first time fishing this stream this year and I hoped to have much better luck. Yesterday I found much better conditions. We had a full day of heavy rains on Saturday and the stream appeared to benefit significantly from the flush. Silt was washed out leaving exposed rock on the previously mucky bottom. Weeds were thinned out and areas with log jams were washed out.
I started with the streamer and landed a good number of fish. Soon after losing my streamer I settled on the pink squirrel of prey.
A brookie!
This guy and another decent trout came from the same deep pool. They both put up a great fight on the new 6wt and I am satisfied with how it handled. I spotted a quick hatch of some type of light colored mayfly around size 18 but couldn't capture one to ID. Hoppers are beginning to hop and a few fish took 'em off the water as I walked through. Within a week or two the locust sized hopper patterns should start to take the bigguns! Stay tuned...
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