El Don del Pez

Went to the FRC today with Don and would describe our outing as "El Don del Pez" (that's the "gift of fish" for you Jon since I know they didn't teach you very much Spanish when you lived in Japan!)  Anyway weather was threatening when we arrived, ugly when we were fishing, and soggy by the time we were done.  Check out how wet my coat is in the photo below!

Don struck first with a nice 19" brown trout, followed not long thereafter with a rainbow.  I told him that he'd caught his two species for fishing merit badge so it was my turn to catch fish, but he seemed to recall that when we were scouts it was necessary to catch three species so we decided that we needed to fulfill the requirements for the merit badge as it existed back in our golden age of scouting.

I actually then caught a tiger, but you can't both work to fulfill each other's merit badge requirements.  Each must do his own work, so we kept at it.  Then I caught a nice rainbow that measured 22" in the net.  I know it looks like I jumped in the lake to get the fish, but that was just the sky dropping onto us.  Forecast was for "showers".  I guess they meant like standing under the shower.

Fuschia bugger, floating line

Merit badge requirement completed!  :-)
Black egg sucking bugger (weighted) on floating line

Don then had this tiger trout cream his fly and take off running.  He actually made me stop fishing while he fought it and wanted me to net it for him.  It was the toughest fight of the day and you can see the satisfaction in the smile!

Way too many strikes without successful hookup

As Rick & Tom well know (and sometimes use to their advantage) my vision has suffered since my ski accident four years ago and I don't always see very clearly.  That was "clearly" a problem today as I kept getting strikes on the rod with my intermediate line.  I kept checking the fly and it looked fine and didn't have weeds on it.  When I went to hook it up at the end of the morning and was unable to do so I discovered the possible reason for unsuccessful strikes.  I know that if Don had seen it he would have told me because he is a nice person.