A Particularly Nice Brown Trout

I fished the Salmon both Friday and Saturday. On Friday my dad had some free time in the morning and we spent it the best possible way, fly fishing. Sure, the Salmon is as busy stocked river, but it is one of the prettiest in the state and very fun to fish. Especially with mice.

At first I was fishing a small high floating mouse. After a few slashes and boils I got a pretty little brook trout. Nice, but not what the mouse was intended to catch. I changed to a fly that I got out of a fly swap from Franky DeMayo. It's a smaller size mouse with a squirmy worm tail, natural rabbit, and a small foam piece on the head. I figured it would ride low and dive a bit in the fast Salmon River currant and be the perfect thing to tempt the trout up in the clear sunlit water. After a few casts I got a tremendous blowup. I set the hook and immediately felt big strong head shakes. I knew right away that it was the big brown I had moved in this spot a few days earlier. It attempted to leave the tail-out and I pushed the CGR to the limit, counting on my heavy tippet to get the job done. I successfully turned the fish and it proceeded to tail walk right over the big boulder in the middle of the run. It kept coming towards be, and as it sped by on the way upstream I realized two thing: it was a solid brown about 19 inches, and it was definitely not freshly stocked. It did a surprisingly aggressive run upstream in the fast riffle and I let it, putting only a little pressure. When it tired I brought it home. When I saw the spots I knew I was looking at a holdover. Big holdover brown in pressured water on a mouse... during they day. Whoa.

I caught a number of other fish on Franky's mouse between the two days, but as for yesterday I don't have much to talk bout fish wise. I enjoyed some time on the water with friends and caught a few. What I need to say is... take care of the river. I spent a lot of time on the second day cleaning up other angler's junk. At the handicap access in the fly only I pulled six flies and a hook with a dried minnow head off of a log on the far side. All flies had long lengths of tippet and one, a triple articulated streamer actually had the whole leader and about 10 feet of fly line! I mean come on... clean up your crap everybody.