Current River 7/16/2005

Met up with another high school buddy named Jarrod. Jarrod is a golfer and had never held a fly rod before. I told him I'd take him fishing Saturday morning and I would be at his house at 4am. His response was that he wouldn't go to bed and not to expect him to drive the next morning. I was supprised to find when I got to his house Saturday morning that he was actually already up. We hit Wal-Mart for some supplies and Jarrod's fishing lisense. I don't really like shopping at Wal-Mart, but it is the only thing open at 4am. We headed down to Baptist Camp access on the Current River. I figured this would be a good place for Jarrod to get a crash course in fly casting. He was a little shakey but picked it up fairly quick. Around 8am the Tricos Started moving upriver and not long after the fish started feeding on the spinners. Luckily I had tied up a good number of size 24 spinners the night before. Jarrod had about a dozen good hits on his Trico, but had a problem hooking up. I managed to land a half dozen rainbows and a couple of decent browns in the same area. I also had a good 16"+ Rainbow on for a little while before he spit the hook. He was sitting in a four foot hole under a log and would only come out every couple of minutes. When he came out he would only come up 3 or 4 times to sip spinners and then return to hide under his log. This technique is proably the reason he has gotten so big so close to a public access. Around 11:00am the canoe traffic began to get extremly bad so we headed to the C&R area at Montauk State Park. I hoped to get Jarrod into a big fish, but I beleive he was a bit fished out because of lack of sleep and the heat. I managed to land four bruisers over 20 inches on Trout Crack flies and small ant patterns.

Dry Fork Creek 7/9/2005

Met up with two old high school buddies, Seth and Travis, at 6am at a low water bridge. We were after smallmouth and largemouth. Seth and Travis The morning started off a bit slow, but everyone managed a smallie and a couple of bluegills by 8am. Then Travis had to take off to put up hay. Seth and I continued downstream hitting all of the likely spots. We caught 3 or 4 smallmouth/largemouth in each good hole and would then have to walk 300 to 400 yards to find the next good hole. It was tuff fishing and we earned every fish we caught. We proably waded 3 total miles through the course of the day. The biggest fish goes to Seth with an 18 inch largemouth. The biggest smallie went about 15 inches. With a total fish count of about 16 smallmouth and 2 or 3 largemouth.