The fishing started bright and early the Friday morning. I started out at Conant and got about 15 between first light and 9:30am. As I was passing the fly shop I see PGW standing the curb with a sign that says "Will work for flies.” Has the world gone crazy?
Actually he didn’t have a sign.
I made a quick u-turn and pulled over and shot the breeze with Paul and his friend for a bit. From there I headed up to McCloud Reservoir to meet the calabeatis hatch. Someone forgot to tell the calabeatis so that was a bust. The evening was planned for Cantera loop where I bumped into Paul and friends again. Once my friend showed up we headed down river a bit. On the way we bumped into this guy that looks all forlorn cause he can’t catch a dang thing, so I feel sorry for him and let him tag along for a short lesson. The fish must have a sense of humor too cause on the first cast I hook up and the guy is impressed. I show him some dry fly and nymphing techniques and send him on his way. It turns out he was more impressed then I thought cause instead of moving up river and giving me some room he goes and get his buddies and sets them on the water just upstream from where I’m working up river. At this point a say forget this and head over to a spot in town where I think it won’t be crowded. I guessed right and caught a couple of nice fish just before it got dark.
Back at the cabin my buds are arriving and want to hear all about the fishing. We dicided to head over to the AhDiNa in the morning which turned out to be a mistake. All I did there was catch an eight incher, break my Powell Fly rod, and loose two pairs of glasses. I guess the only good thing about that was that the glasses were just cheap magnifiers.
Saturday evening we break into two groups and head out to fish the upper Sac. I decided to head down river to below Gibson and hit some, new to me, water. We did pretty good there with both of us catching some nice 14 inchers. I did a bit of exploring and as it was getting dark headed back down to the riffle where we had started. It was now very close to dark. On my third cast I hooked a large fish on a #8 orange stimulator. The fish heads right toward me so I can’t tell how big it is. Fortunately I was able to get all my line on the reel before he took off across the river. By this time I’m sure it is a big fish so I start the play him as careful as I can. He is strong and can hold right in the fastest current with out me budging him a bit. Finally he gets tired of that and runs down river til he gets about twenty feet into my backing. That’s when he decides to go airborne. Finally he seems to be coming my way and I think I have him licked. It was slow but he finally gave it up and I netted the biggest rainbow I have ever hooked in the Upper Sac. I lined him up with the twenty in mark on my rod. He was a solid four inches longer then that! I revived him and sent him on his way to give someone else a great time some day.
Nothing much happened on Sunday. I felt so good about the big rainbow that I sent my buddies off to fish the morninng and stayed behind to clean up the cabin. We all caught a few before heading home around noon.
TD
Favoured: 0
