Halleluiah! (3/22/11)

After several weeks without fishing, mainly due to adverse weather and a family vacation to Washington DC, the stars aligned and it was time once again to chase trout. The day started off as all days chasing trout do, with the optimism and excitement of a little kid about to sit on Santa’s lap. There were a few things that needed my attention before departing Sunday morning so I instructed Donny P, who would be joining me to chase some trout of his own, to show up between 10:30 and 11:00. There was a knock on my front door at a few minutes after 10. When I opened it I found Donny P standing there giddier than a school girl about to go to her first dance. He had a look on his face that read, “I know I am a little early, but LET’S GO FISHING!”

A couple of things have changed since my last fishing trip. The first is that I have a new Silverado. Not a big deal really, but for whatever reason my mind noted the fact that this trip would be its maiden voyage, and as the luck of being an Average Joe Fisherman would have it, there was a distinct “clunking” noise coming from the front of the truck by the time I returned home and pulled into my driveway. Ugh! The second is that my fishing partner for the day, Donny P, has lost approximately 30 pounds since we last fished together. Now, if you have seen previous pictures on this blog of Don, you know that he wasn’t chubby to begin with. While Don isn’t so thin now that you would miss him if you blinked as he walked by, he is thin enough that I figure I could push him out of the way to catch a fish if I needed to, which in my book makes him the perfect fishing partner!

The plan for the day was to trout fish for a few hours on the North Branch followed by targeting steelhead on a different stream in the evening. The day was overcast and looked like it might snow at any time. The wind was absent and the stream was in beautiful shape. I tied a large streamer to the 7 foot 1x leader on my Scott SAS 5 weight. “If I were a trout I’d eat that!” I thought. For the next few hours I cast that streamer and a couple of others into every pool, rifle, pocket and undercut bank I could. In almost three hours of fishing, I was rewarded with one twelve inch brown trout following my streamer out of a dark pool. That trout was the only fish I saw. To say fishing was tough would be an understatement. Tired and ready to try something else, we moved.

During the thirty minute drive to the next stream, Donny P and I spoke of how nice it would be to catch a steelhead, something I have yet to do. We arrived at the stream to find it high and stained. Despite this, we pressed on. In the end our efforts were futile, but the snow came and it ended up being a very beautiful day on the river, even though we didn’t land a fish. The company was good too. All-in-all it was just another day in paradise.