Sunday was a big fishing day for me. Family commitments got in the way of a couple of trips planned earlier in the week, so I ended up scheduling two for Sunday.
The first was a backyard river session with a good friend and his nephew, who just moved to town from Florida. Neither had fly fished before, but my buddy picked-up a couple of CGR 2 wts during the last sale event and was eager to try them out. We started the morning lining-up a reel and tying a couple of flies, then headed back to the North Gabe.
After a little casting coaching -- just the basics, since that's all I know -- and a quick discussion of river wading, they both caught their first fish on the fly and seemed enthused to do it again.
Next up: load-up the green whale and head south to meet Preast. We fished a stretch of O***n Creek (see, Randy? I'm trying to be more discreet. lol) that I had waded before and hoped would have a bit more water since the rains. It did. Just a bit, though.
Even when the stream is intermittent, there are spring-fed pools that hold fish year-round ... yesterday, it was flowing the entire reach, but not enough to paddle the entire thing. In fact, there was one drag -- up and down (twice) through a steep gravel bank to get around a logjam ... it was hard going down, and harder coming back.
Randy kicked-off the day with a nice bass at the base of a towering cypress tree. I caught the tree. And then a bass.
As we continued on, we stopped to wade, climbed out and fished from atop a mid-stream boulder island, and then paddled down to the dam.
It was here that I broke out my new Echo Carbon XL 2 wt. and tied-on one of MBarker's fly swap briminators (Thanks Mike, killer flies ... if you find you have too many in the box, now that you're a native brookie snob, just send 'em this way ;-).) Three fish on the first three casts, including a 9-inch Rio and a red-spotted sunfish (a first for me, so far as I can recall).
Meanwhile, Preast strung-up a TFO Finesse 1 wt. he built and proceeded to have a ball with the sunfish and Rios at this spot. Then we swapped rods, and it kinda complicated my burgeoning bromance with the Carbon XL (we're back together now, after that brief fling with the whispy 1 wt ... I *love* that 2 wt!).
We tethered the whale and continued walking downstream. Interesting section of river here, with a massive, corrugated flowstone raised bed on river left and a small, shallow channel river right, and what can only be described as a cypress forest behind it. The trees were three ranks deep, some with ivy-clad trunks.
There were some surprisingly large fish lurking beneath the grassy side of the bank and around deadfalls. I didn't actually land any of the really big one (one huge bass zoomed down the stream and I was too slow to keep the hook from pulling out) -- maybe Randy will post some of his. I did get this pretty Rio, though.
We would have liked to go farther, but figured we had just enough daylight to get back when we turned around.
We figured the return trip would be prime time for topwater action, but the fish weren't interested. At all.
We got back to the put-in at dusk and I think I slept 9 hours straight last night. And I'm sore today.
Terrific trip, more for the company and the new data points than the fish, but the fish were okay.
*52 minutes drive time from Georgetown. Hey -- if you're coming to the Meetup in two weeks -- and I really hope you are! -- can you please comment in the stickied Meetup thread in Announcements? My wife needs an hors d'ouvres and beer count for the Friday night meet-and-greet and presentation by Chris Johnson of Living Waters Fly Fishing. Thanks!