At last rain stopped and dry weather is here. We've had some showers but in general the streams are fishable.

So I went to the stream I call home waters, today. Waders on, since what seemed like an eternity; 6x tippets were kept were they could be easily found; the 8' and a WF5F; 14-18 nymphs tied yesterday for the ocassion, on the best spot in the box....

I arrived late in the morning and only stayed for 5 hours. Mendings were really rusty in the beginning but improved within the first few casts. Since the water was not completely clear the 6x tippets remained untied.There are monsters in that stream that grow to the 10-12lbs mark so any oportunity to use larger tippets is greatly appreciated.

The fish were really active on 24-28 midges for which I don't have the skills to tie, cast, fish.... So I went for a general nymph in size 18 and prayed for the best. I have never seen that much surface action on my home stream before, I assumed trout weren't going to target my fly. They didn't.... for a while!

So I moved upstream where the river widens a bit and the water was clearer. The idea was to quit roll casting and get some real casting action (the place I always use as a starting point has no room for anything but milimetric precision roll casts) even if there were no strikes. And then maybe try to fool them with a size 16 EHC.

But as soon as I got there, one of the lunkers cleared the water to show me his full body (must have been in the 6 lbs neighborhood), then a friend of his did the same just to his side and some other noisy rises followed filling the pool with enormous rings. Such activity made me sweat in anticipation for some strikes. I forgot about the EHC or the casting practice.

"Up and across... with a swinging motion in front of their noses at the end of the drift.... that should do!" -Or so I thought.-

First cast, the drift was anything but dragless, the nymph was not moving as I wanted it to, tried to mend but it was too late. Anyone said rusty?!?

Second cast, a good drift, I was able to see the nymph for a split second, it moved nicely, I mended and rised the rod as you should when the line is just in front of you, then began the swinging motion and BOOM a strike. A strong one.

Third cast, same steps.... A nice 12 inch rainbow.

The thing fought like a warrior and made my day.

What a great day to "open" the stream FFing season. As some of you already know, we don't have closures of any kind except for the times when mother nature isn't that cooperative. So FFing gets reduced to still waters.

But the best part of it was that the stream becomes the paradise of the "gusaneros" (=those who use worms. Wormers? heh) in the wet, rainy months when the river gets imposible to fly fish in. Today they were still there. Like 20 of them. As always they looked at me as a creature from mars. But at the end of the day the only fish caught was that beautiful trout that took an 18 nymph!!!

They learned a lesson -so did I. Many. Truth be told- and once again nature scores higher than all of us. The fish were tired of hitting, the otherwise unfalible, worms and that makes my stream again a really nice place to fly fish in.

Ps. At the end of the fight the trout decided to jump onto some vegetation. Unfortunatelly the line-to-leader knot got tangled so bad in it, I had to fiddle with it for a long time and the trout didn't recover from trying to swim upstream while the shrub hold it. Tomorrow I will have trout for lunch. And for that it's been a while too!

[This message has been edited by dphotoco (edited 08 January 2006).]

[This message has been edited by dphotoco (edited 08 January 2006).]



[This message has been edited by dphotoco (edited 08 January 2006).]

[This message has been edited by dphotoco (edited 08 January 2006).]