Yesterday dawned dark and overcast. Official forecast was 'cloudy, with an 80% chance of bass'. So I grabbed a coffee and a muffin, and went to the loft to tie up a S__tfaced MacDougall. Its a #2 dry fly hook, white calftail tail, conical (popper-style) chartreuse deerhair body, grizzly palmered body hackle, and a grizzly collar. Looks huge but doesn't weight that much.
In a last minute fit of wimposity, I put the 3wt back and grabbed a 5 wt 9' rod because the winds were coming up. I struggled into my hippers, applied a liberal dose of deet to discourage the blackflies and mosquitoes once I entered the woods, and hiked down to the pool.
Thirty minutes in, after some flashy, splashy strikes, I had landed a half dozen big fallfish breeders who managed to get their mouths around the fly, each time thinking I had hooked a bass. Then, something delicately sipped the fly under and it was game on. It wasn't the brute, but the smally measured 18" and fought well. Over the next hour, I landed (in addition to a few more fallfish) two more bass measuring between 18 and 19", but no sign of the big'un and no smaller bass.
I guess I'll leave it for a couple of days and try something else. As the water level drops, the big fish will slowly drop back downstream, but I've got about a week before they leave this pool and it appears I'm the only one fishing it so far. Besides, if I ever become so jaded as to be disappointed in catching 'only' 18" fish a ten minute walk from my house, well, shame on me.
My apologies (to everyone but Cliff
) for the use of the word '5wt'.
brent