Fishing Without the Priests...

I was supposed to takes the Priests Quorum from the ward fly-fishing this morning. Friday I got a text that they weren't going to be able to go. Hey, I could stay home and mow the lawn, but I spun the dial on my wall and I couldn't get it to stop anywhere but on "Go Fishing"!

Actually, Kirk Morris, a fishing fanatic in the ward who I had talked to about maybe helping with the priests called and asked what the plans were. I said the trip was off, but knowing his wife and kids were out of town, I kindly offered to keep him company for the day on the Touchet River. He gladly accepted. For you sports fans, Kirk is the nephew of Jack Morris, the famous forkball pitcher in the major leagues. And he is as wild about fishing as some of his uncle's forkballs were at the plate.

Kirk and one of his nice ones

We fished 0.9 miles of the river from 8:30 to 2:30, through wind, rain, and sun. Some stretches were familiar and some were new to me. We found plenty of fish. None in some holes that looked good, then 20 or 30 in the next good run. I started with the double psycho, Kirk mainly caught them on a gray hare's ear that he tied. Some flyers and chesters, but a lot of nice 8 to 10-inchers, and we each caught a couple honest 12-inchers, great fish in this river. About noon we switched to dries, and had some non-stop action, Kirk on a home-tied kind of stimulator and an EHC, me with a standard big stimulator. Some October caddis around. I forgot how fun dries were!





My last, and nicest fish, that exploded on the fly in a little pocket of soft water against the bank

I found a kindred spirit after the likeness of Tom, who would fish from sunup to sundown. We almost stopped fishing three times, before we finally quit, each time having to check out that next hole just upstream, which led to the next and the next, which ultimately added a couple hours to our fishing day.

 

Pretty fish

A side stream came in that was heavily overgrown, that I thought was Wolf Fork, and I dipped a little rainbow out for a new stream, but then I got thinking about it and checked on Google Earth, and my suspicions were correct, Wolf Fork is a few miles upriver. This must have been a side channel, although I didn't see where it left the main river. Oh well, I'll have to go back and pick up that stream another time.

 

Briefly thought to be stream #125, but that will have to wait

Ended the day at Ray's, of course, with the cheeseburger basket and blackberry shake. An incredibly awesome day!