Dream Stream

Catching a lot of fish is fun. Catching a big fish is awesome. Catching a lot of big fish is amazing. Catching a lot of big fish by sight casting with flies you would usually use in Alaska? Well, that's the Dream Stream. Since I did this last time, let's try the timeline again.

2:00 am: Wake up, get dressed, hop in the car. We have enough food for two days, two rods, three reels, and lots of flies (No Buckskins. That will be important later).

5:30 am: Arrive at the Dream Stream. For the first time ever, we are the first ones there. That means it's time to start fishing.

Day One: Fourteenth cast, the indicator drops. Hook set, and we have one hell of a fish on. Within five seconds of me being unprepared, the rod tip has dropped and the fish is off. Time to keep fishing. The fishing stays quite consistent, and my third hookup brings a fish to hand. A nice 19 inch rainbow takes off the skunk early. We keep fishing, and nice fish keep coming to hand. One more cast, and my indicator has dropped again. I set the hook, and the tight drag on the reel starts to sing. A minute or so later, this bad boy came to hand:

Two casts after that pig, the indicator drops yet again. One more hook set. If I thought the reel was singing a minute ago, it's taking full on Dubstep now. And for those of you who live under a rock or listen to real music, Dubstep involves a huge bass drop that will rattle your teeth. I fight for almost five minutes, and the biggest trout I have caught in a long time finds its way into my net. Now, you were probably hoping for a picture of that monster, weren't you? Well, you can have one. Soon. We need time for the drama to build here, folks (plus my buddy hasn't emailed me the picture yet).

We fished for the rest of the day and caught some real nice fish, but I definitely wasn't playing my A-Game anymore. A big fish will do that to me.

Day Two: I'm up early again, out on the water before the Sun. I fish the same hole as yesterday, and catch a few more nice fish. After a few hours, I notice a familiar hat-jacket combo coming down the river. For those of you who don't know Big Fish Bobby D and Monster Trout Hunter Todd, they are the masters of big trout. These guys go to some of the most famous rivers in the state, walk into a crowd of people, and nail a hawg. They invite me to fish with them, and I gladly except. They are picking off some nice fish in a riffle, and I don't want to just go in and high-hole them. Instead, I fish a deep slot below them. I'm casting to a dark shadow, hoping it's a fish. My third cast is on target, and I see the shape move toward where I think my flies are. The rod goes tight, and a few minutes later a solid fish comes to the net. This seems like a good way to end my day, but I decide to tag along with Bob and Todd. We walk around on the high bank looking for fish, and quickly find some. Todd hooks up first, then I wade in. Looking closer, I think I see a long shadow. "Is that a fish?" "Where," responds Bob. "Right there," I say, as I set the hook into a 22 inch rainbow. This seems like a good way to end the trip.

Lonely Bass And Crowded Trout

A Great Day On The Water!

I spent the last couple of days doing an early Summer tour of the waters, to see where I should spend more time and where I will be wasting it. Well, the report has come in! The bass are lonely, all by themselves and hard to find. We caught one bass in total, right around 7:00 at night. We had fished quite a bit before that, so it wasn't great. That one single bass was at Wonderland Lake, which has also risen about three feet. Pella Crossing only produced one fish, and it didn't even get all the way in. Since it was a big fish, I already had the headlines running through my mind. "Jay Zimmerman's Backstabber Proves Successful On Large Bass." Well it did, but I didn't. The fish popped of after a couple minutes of fighting. So with that day done, the outlook was bleak. Oh, and did I mention all the carp were two hundred feet off the shore? Ya, crazy. So after having a late dinner, watching TV, and doing a book burning of all our schoolwork, we went to bed. I woke up the next morning, hoping this day would be better. My friend had a tennis tourney in the morning, so I stayed home and tied flies. He got home, and we went up the Boulder Canyon. I mean, bass just wasn't an option anymore. I might as well cast in my yard at that rate. So up Boulder Canyon we were. I'd say we got up around noon, and it was looking good. The water looked something like this:

Lookin' Nice Above Boulder Falls!

My first cast was in, to no success. My fifth cast, however, proved it had the right drift. The fish at the top of the post was produced on a Blue Poison Tung. I caught a couple more fish, including a really miniscule brown that's pictured at the bottom. After that tiny thing, though, I caught the biggest fish of the trip. A beautiful, colored, fat rainbow was in the net:

Big Boy Rainbow

I released the fish, who allowed us to take another picture as he swam off. A couple more nice browns, but then a disaster struck. Or should I say, a could-have-been disaster. I ran out of Blue Poison Tungs! So I had to decide a new pattern to tie on. And then something little and red fell out of my box. What was that? A sign? Yes, indeed it was! The "Alien Shit" was sitting neatly on top of a rock. So I tied it on, and put my first cast into a small pocket. Bam! This brown was sitting by the bank ten seconds later, with the Alien in it's mouth:

"I liked the Red Fly, So I Ate It. Ya, I knew It Was a Fly, But It Was So Pretty!"

So here is one of those other Browns I talked about earlier, and the last picture of that big Rainbow swimming away. All in all, a great day out there!

Bye-Bye, Buddy!

A Solid Boulder Creek Brown