Sunday, September 12, 2010

Tough Trouting

Last Saturday Ed called me up to go fly fishing on the Kinni and of course I said "you betcha."  We had about 4 hours of fishing in before the rain pushed us off.  I caught a handfull of browns using small streamers, and Ed caught a trout on a fly he tied, which was a first for him.  Way to go buddy, keep at it!  It was my first time down to the Kinni since the high waters and you can see some obvious changes to the river, not all bad either, except that we didn't catch anything over 10" long.
  


As we were getting out of our waders at the truck, it started raining really good, which was about the same time that Ed realized he had misplaced his cell phone.  We looked quickly before giving up betting that it was somewhere inside the truck.  We then headed back into town to the Mainstreeter for lupper as the rain poored down.  By the time we were done eating, the rain was done.  With one more look through everything inside the truck to find Ed's phone, I spotted it...on the roof of my Toyota.  The miracle wasn't that it was there after driving into town from the fisherman's parking lot, it was that after all that rain, it still worked!
Yesterday, the Canadian and I went back to the Kinni for the evening and fished till dark.  Between the two of us, Ben caught the first, biggest, and most fish, by landing the one and only trout for the evening.  Even the worm dunker that was fishing below us was not catching anything.  Odd, he must have bought the cheap live bait.  We ran into a few people with nothing much significant caught, with the exception of one guy.  He said he caught sixteen fish.  Show off or liar, I can't decide which.  He, for what it's worth, said that he was using grey scud patterns.  hmm, the one fly in the kitchen sink I didn't throw in the water.  Go figure.  At our debriefing over supper at the Mainstreeter in River Falls, we decided to try fishing again Sunday on a stretch of river Ben knew of in southern Minnesota.  

Ben served up some great Sweadish pancakes and jam for breakfast.  FABULOUS!  Then he and Jen and I left Amy behind, and headed out the door to see what the fishing would bring us.  With the one minor issue of back tracking bit to a local DNR license agent after realizing that when Jen bought her MN fishing license at the Fly Angler this morning before drinking her coffee that she forgot to add the trout stamp.  REALLY GIRL? REALLY? GEEZ!!  So I got over my minor aneurysm, and she bought her trout stamp and we continued on to trout country.  Which, by the way, we did see a Conservation Officer driving around several times.  He never stopped to chat with us.  Dang, he could have seen Jen's brand new shiny unused trout stamp!  Just kidding Jen. Kinda.


We fished for half a day and then decided to pull the plug.  It was pretty damn hot, especially wandering in the woods in waders with our sleeves rolled down to the wrist due to the amount of stinging nettles around.  It was a bright blue bird day and not a single cloud in the sky for cover.  To add to the day, the trout didn't get the memo we were coming to play as they were not really active or feeding.  I caught three brookies, Ben caught one brown, and poor Jen caught none (must have been the bad trout-karma for her earlier "trout stamp incident").  One of the brookies I caught was on one of my latest wet fly concept patterns that stayed up until 5am tying this past Friday night.  (Note to Yaz: it was the black/silver variation of the flies I gave you on Saturday).

Even with the fishing not being on fire for us the past week, I have hopes that this coming weekend will get better.  The forecast is optimistic, with temperatures easing back a bit, and as the end of inland trout season comes nearer, the trout gods need give up something for us to reflect on during the upcoming winter.



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