Jim, I had an incident like yours about 30 years ago on the upper Clackamas River in Oregon. Only mine wasn’t a two foot brown but a two foot summer run steelhead. I yanked that Royal Coashman bucktail so fast I swear I see him often with those big eyes and chasing my fly through the air. I have kicked my butt for years over that one. Now that I think about it, it may have been three feet long!
I wonder how many other readers have had an incident like that?
Not a flyfishing story but I yanked a spinnerbait out from in front of the biggest pike I have ever seen. I still can picture him going after my bait.
JC,
Fall is my favorite time to be on that stretch of river. even though It has never been that productive for me that time of year. A sunny October day will make you apreciate the colorful hardwoods of northern Michigan. The rivers are quiet and the woods have more than a few Ruffed Grouse to chase when the dog gets tired of sitting next to the stream wathing me fish.
I love ice fishing, being from Oregon and moving to Michigan in my early fifties, I found a new way to enjoy fishing in the winter. I have made several trips to the U.P. to ice fice on Lake Superior and surounding lakes…now thats ice fishing. Yes, you are correct Jim, I cannot top your giant pike, with what little hammerheads and whitefish we took for the sake of freezing to death and pooking the ice from the holes…but what stories we tell in the shanty.
“But if you go ice fishing, do not blame me when you get home, if you do get home…I think that the only important truth I have left out is that a man gets fed up with being comfortable and sane,” Arthur R. Macdougall Jr. “Fishing through the ice” (1963)
[This message has been edited by Jonezee (edited 28 March 2006).]