Fishing Epiphanies

As some of you know, I went to the a famous section of a river near Fairplay about a month ago. It was my first time there, and it was pretty much how I imagined. Lots of people, not tons of fish, but some real big boys. We arrived around 8:00 at the upper parking lot, and I hopped out and started looking for fish. After walking for a little while, I spotted a few nice browns. I flipped in a few casts, and one of the fish ate my fly. I set the hook, watched the fish swim upstream with my fly, and rub his head against a rock until my flies popped out. Time to try something new. I walked up a few steps further, and was casting to a nice fish until I noticed something out of the corner of my eye. That boulder I sitting in the river was swimming around. Holy shit, that's a huge fish! I started casting to him, and after about ten minutes, I got a reward. The fish calmly inhaled my fly, and the battle was on. Sadly, the battle ended when he porpoised down a waterfall, pounded my tippet along rocks, and snapped me off. I'm not even kidding you. I decided to take a break from these fish, and headed down lower to a nice deep hole. I flipped in the next six casts, and proceeded to pull out five nice fish and a pee-wee football shaped rainbow. So now I wasn't worried about the skunk. We kept fishing down the river, caught a few more fish, and headed to lunch. Afterwards, we went back to the first section. Low and behold, the big boy was back. I worked him for a good few minutes, and he finally got angry enough to eat the fly. I set the hook once again, and tried to turn his head towards me. He had other plans though, and dove into the tall grass in the water. Well, there goes my fly. So we moved on, kept fishing for the rest of the day, caught a few more fish, and headed home. Yes we did look for the big fish again, but he was no where to be found. Guess he was finally smart enough to leave. As we were driving home, I was a little upset with myself. But then I realized something: 1) It's not fishing if you catch every fish, and it wouldn't be fun if you did, and 2) I caught a bunch of fish, and a beautiful brown around 21 inches. However you put this, it can't be anything but a great day.

So, a great day. I'll get those pictures of my friend's camera sometime this week, and post them.

Randy Hicks Of RMA With A Nice Fall Brown