Tuesday, April 11, 2017

I'm Not Even Surprised Anymore

Last year when I started getting trout regularly on mice during the day, I was honestly a little surprised. I'm over that by now. Not only do mice seem to work well on some rivers, they seem a times to me the best way to catch the fish on the TMA I frequent. For some reason a yellow Master Splinter is the one they really like, and yes I have tried many other colors and pattern styles... they really like the yellow Splinter. Yesterday was a slow start. I hooked and lost two large rainbows and landed one brown then suffered through 5 hours of just plain boring fishing.


I stuck it out though, and after those five hours of painfully slow fishing I started to get looks and changes on the mouse again. Then, finally, a blowup. Fish on!






The action was not constant. Far from it. It was run and gun action. Find a pod of fish. Catch the ones that were willing. Move on.






I did get into one really good pod of fish for a while, all browns and rainbows over 12 inches. I must have pulled 20 trout out of that pod on the master splinter. THAT was consistent action. I took photos of the biggest one, the rainbow above. Who really wants to see 20 ugly stocked trout? Last year I photographed pretty much every trout I caught on a mouse, but I'm so used to it now it isn't a surprise to me. It is surprising to the guys around me who are fishing bait and flies subsurface and catching a third the number of fish I am though....

6 comments:

  1. That was a great day except for the five hours of no takes. Maybe fish take a nap mid-day? The wilds look healthy.
    Tie, fish, write and photo on...

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    1. Wilds? No wilds here. All stocked trout.

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    2. Yes, raggedy fins. Though the first brook trout is less ragged than the others.

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    3. Yup. Plus the ratio of wild/stocked trout in this river is probably about 1/100.

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  2. That mouse fly looks very interesting. What size hook do you use and what weight rod?

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    Replies
    1. I tie that particular pattern in sz. 2 and 4. Can be fished on rods as light as a 5wt but I wouldn't recommend anything lighter than that.

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