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....