Speed Fishing WTMA

Sometimes you just don't have time to fish for very long. What do you do? Just not bother? Kick back and relax for a little while instead? That's not me. I have to fish. If it has to be rushed, I can move pretty fast. I am confident enough to know that I can almost always make the right moves to get it done in a short time window. Such was the case yesterday, on a small stream I have fished a fair bit but certainly don't really "know" yet. It isn't a difficult fishery though either. I had a stretch in mind that I wanted to hit and I knew that in the amount of time I had I'd have to cover it systematically but very, very quickly. If I had to run between spots, so be it. I was covering everything I wanted to.

The fly I chose was an Ausable Ugly, sz. 10, the best all around nymph/micro streamer I've ever fished, and I was fishing it on a mono rig with a dacron indicator of my own design and a 28 inch 5x tippet length. The rod, a 9ft 5wt, which seems overkill, but there are substantial fish in this water and I've been burned before with lighter tackle that couldn't keep them out of the cuts and wood. In the end, I am not a fan of fine wire hooks and super long, light rods, which were designed for keeping small fish from shaking off and preserving fine tippets. That's not my game. I often shake fish off intentionally and if I'm fishing 7x, it's certainly not with a subsurface presentation. Loosing a bunch of average or below average fish won't phase me and I like to be able to basically skate in a 16 incher if push comes to shove. And I land a bunch of small fish anyway. Like this guy:

I covered a half a mile of water relatively thoroughly. I skipped a bit because I knew fore sure someone had just fished it, but I hit pretty much everything I wanted to. The ugly did it's job, by it on the swing or dead drifting. I got a couple decent little fish. One was really pretty.

All in all it was a productive little outing. It wasn't ideal, even though it wasn't that warm I ended up sweating, but I sure as hell wouldn't have traded it for just not going.

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