A bad day gone good! Sorta
I had an awesome day of fishing today (Monday), even though a few bad things happened. The morning got off to a late start but I was finally underway by 9:00 AM. Traffic was surprisingly light, I was able to maintain my 55 up until the big Milk truck in the tight curves, and it was all 35 mph from there on.
I finally reached my first area, after about 45 minutes and nothing I moved on. Moving from one spot to the next continued up until about Noon, this is when the first bad thing happened. This river is loaded with all sorts of Jeep trails; today I went down a new one. After about 100 yds down the trail ruts forked, the right fork looked to be a very nasty truck swallowing mud pit. I decide to stay left but the truck and the ruts had a different idea, anyway long story short, the mud pit from hell swallowed the right side of my truck. After putting some chains on and about an hours worth of work, I was able to work my truck free. I left that area and back up to the hwy.
After fishing hard for a few more hours, I came to my last spot. I’ve pulled a lot of fish from this one spot, so I had faith in it. I tied on my new Nightmare jig with the Metallic Red beads (pictured below). After about 20 minutes passed my hopes started to fade, suddenly my float disappeared and I set the hook. This fish immediately came out of the water with a nice acrobatic flip and about 5 or 6 more to follow and several drag burning runs. After the fish settled down a little I jumped down off my rock, as soon as my foot hit the ground I rolled my ankle and came down on my knee and elbow, Dam that hurt, and I still had the fish on. When I finally got it close enough I could see that it was a Mint Bright Native Hen. I snapped a quick pic and sent her on her way, I estimated her to be in the 10 lb. range.
With my ankle still in pain, I retied with a non beaded McKenzie jig. Fished it for about 10 minutes when the float disappeared again. This fish didn’t do any glamorous leaps like the first one but it did strip some line. About 1 minute into the fight the fish snags me up between two rocks forcing me to limp my way down stream to try and free it. I got myself un-snagged and still had the fish. After a few more minutes I landed nice colored Hatchery Buck, which I released after a quick pic.
This day was a bad day to start but ended up a good one at the end. As for my Ankle, well, after the drive home I can barely put any weight on it. Looks like I’ll be off to the Doctor tomorrow.
Jig’n
I had an awesome day of fishing today (Monday), even though a few bad things happened. The morning got off to a late start but I was finally underway by 9:00 AM. Traffic was surprisingly light, I was able to maintain my 55 up until the big Milk truck in the tight curves, and it was all 35 mph from there on.
I finally reached my first area, after about 45 minutes and nothing I moved on. Moving from one spot to the next continued up until about Noon, this is when the first bad thing happened. This river is loaded with all sorts of Jeep trails; today I went down a new one. After about 100 yds down the trail ruts forked, the right fork looked to be a very nasty truck swallowing mud pit. I decide to stay left but the truck and the ruts had a different idea, anyway long story short, the mud pit from hell swallowed the right side of my truck. After putting some chains on and about an hours worth of work, I was able to work my truck free. I left that area and back up to the hwy.
After fishing hard for a few more hours, I came to my last spot. I’ve pulled a lot of fish from this one spot, so I had faith in it. I tied on my new Nightmare jig with the Metallic Red beads (pictured below). After about 20 minutes passed my hopes started to fade, suddenly my float disappeared and I set the hook. This fish immediately came out of the water with a nice acrobatic flip and about 5 or 6 more to follow and several drag burning runs. After the fish settled down a little I jumped down off my rock, as soon as my foot hit the ground I rolled my ankle and came down on my knee and elbow, Dam that hurt, and I still had the fish on. When I finally got it close enough I could see that it was a Mint Bright Native Hen. I snapped a quick pic and sent her on her way, I estimated her to be in the 10 lb. range.
With my ankle still in pain, I retied with a non beaded McKenzie jig. Fished it for about 10 minutes when the float disappeared again. This fish didn’t do any glamorous leaps like the first one but it did strip some line. About 1 minute into the fight the fish snags me up between two rocks forcing me to limp my way down stream to try and free it. I got myself un-snagged and still had the fish. After a few more minutes I landed nice colored Hatchery Buck, which I released after a quick pic.
This day was a bad day to start but ended up a good one at the end. As for my Ankle, well, after the drive home I can barely put any weight on it. Looks like I’ll be off to the Doctor tomorrow.
Jig’n
