Practicing for Spring

The temp today was in the upper fifties so I decided to make a quite trip to Walker County Lake to land a few rainbows. I was fishing right before the temps were supposed to drop in the twenties overnight. In fact, we are supposed to get at least 3 inches of snow by noon tomorrow. Southern's go wild when they hear the word snow and crowd in the supermarkets to stock up on milk and bread. Hopefully, the snow will all be gone by Wednesday and we will back in the rain mode. In fact, I would much rather have the snow than the rain. The rain has slowed our house construction to a crawl, the inside will be finished before the outside. 

Healthy rainbow landed using the Flashback; no mending just making the long cast and a slow retrieve. I missed a few simply because I wasn't watching my line close enough. It seems fish always know when you're not paying attention, that's when they decide to hit. 

A peaceful couple of hours until the wind kicked up and the temps started to drop. I'm missing fishing the tailrace and its tight seams and pocket water. I'm afraid it's out for now because of all the rain and generation. In the meantime, I will stay in practice with the lake trout. 

I thought I would share the family photo during our Xmas stay in Tennessee. The little creek behind the willow tree has small fish in it for the kids to play with. 

Just wondering if any of you guys have used fly clips. I read a short description the other day detailing how handy they are when changing flies. This one in the image is a size 1 which will handle size 12 to 16 flies. I don't know how effective it would be when using dry flies. 

Reminising

Need I say more!!!!

Camera "Malfunction" Fishing the Caney Friday

The title of this post pretty much sums up the mishap that occurred while landing lots of stocker size trout early Friday morning. In fact, today’s trip was my best this year for the trout count on the Caney-------but a minus count when it came to camera work.

 I dropped my camera in the water while trying to take a picture of one of the rainbows I landed. I knew it was gone when I couldn’t get it to turn back on, needless to say, I lost all the images of today’s trip.

 A short recount of the morning trip, arriving early at 6:30 and was met by lots of other fishermen and a super cloud of fog on the water. I started fishing with size 20 midge using an indicator in 2 to 3 ft. -depths. I got to touch a few rainbows, using the tiny fly, but as usual, I kept losing too many to continue fishing with it. So mid-morning I decided to go with 18 size midge. The 18 sizes proved to be my success ticket. I landed numbers of trout standing on a shallow sandbar and letting the midge drift into two seams, one to the left of the sandbar and the other flowing in at an angle; where the two deeper seams meet was the sweet spot. I know I landed at least a dozen trout in that one spot.
 I would land a few more browns and rainbows fishing small pockets closer to where my truck was parked before the generator forced me to leave. All the trout today was not anything larger than 12” but lots of fun to land using my 4 wt. 9 ft. Redington.

 So I’m looking for a new waterproof camera, any suggestions??? 

Fishing McCutcheon Creek for Rainbow

Fishing McCutcheon Creek near our home in Spring Hill last week brought back memories of fishing some of the warm water streams in Mississippi years ago as a boy. Those early years found me using a cane pole and worms landing sunfish and catfish in a lot of the streams I fished there. Last week I was armed with my 3 weight Redington; ready to land a few stocker rainbows. I notice I was the only one using a fly rod. There were a lot of eager fishermen waiting with a spinning rod and reel ready to “clean plow” fishing the small stream. The majority of the 150 trout that were stocked on that Friday were all caught and taken home for a meal by the fishermen at the end of the day.

The trout were released in 2 to 3 ft. depths

Nothing like seeing the thrill  on a child's face once they land a fish

Colton with his first rainbow on the fly rod---congrats Colton on a job well done!!

Colton help me land numbers of rainbow this size, all were release for other kids to enjoy

Colton with his Dad Wesley after they landed this huge rainbow using the spinning reel and a crappie nibblet as bait. Colton's dad told me he had never fished for trout before. We watched it swim away after a hero shot.

Ken, the Hatchery director told me when they arrived that he bought 10 of these big fish for the young kids to land. What made me really sick was seeing 4 of these big trout in metal nets dead caught by adults. A lot of metal nets were filled with trout before I left for lunch. The practice of catch and release was not in place on this day!!! 

McCutcheon Creek