Wednesday, I played hooky because I saw a break in the weather and decided to hit a mountain lake about an hour from home. Have a 12' aluminum boat I can row or stand-up cast well from. If I'm not seeing surface action I'll troll a bead-headed fly or drift and cast a WF4 with 20' sink tip and let the woolly bugger sink to the bottom before I start stripping and twitching back to the boat, trying to bounce it along the bottom as much as possible. Not sure if this is really fly fishing or jigging, but since I'm using a FF605 Fenwick, fly line and fly, I'll call it fly fishing. I was doing well "jigging" catching the usual 10" - 15" Rainbows (the 14-15" are nice holdovers), when I got a good strike, set the hook and she ran for a couple seconds and stopped. Crap, I thought she wrapped me in a clump of grass. Though there aren't many clumps where I was, so I lifted up to see if I could pull her loose of the grass when she took off (she realized she was hooked). 10 yds into my backing later she stopped. After 15-20 min, getting her close to the boat and three of those runs, she finally tired enough to get her in a net...two tries in the net and that was not going to work, so I ended up just grabbing above the tail like a Salmon or Steelhead to lift her in...at 28 1/2" and 12lbs, I'll need a bigger net....didn't get good photos, because I knew I tired her out more than I should, so I snapped a few and got her back in the water to revive her...she swam away...
Initially, I figured it was a brood stock they occasionally dump in the lake, but she had no signs of being in a concrete pen her whole life with a nearly perfect tail and nose...but IDK
Love being outgunned and I should play hooky more often.
Sandman
Posted: 17 Jun 2022, 17:20 • 
