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.