Another Successful Black Fishday

The Governor may have ordered us to avoid Thanksgiving gatherings to reduce the spread of Covid-19, but luckily he didn't order outdoor recreation closed down as he did earlier in the year (I think we would have become conscientious objectors if that had happened). In the great outdoors social distancing was of no concern as we had a mile and a half of stream to ourselves. 

Tom and I met at the Big Ditch to see if we could repeat the magic of last year, this time with Brad and his dad Jeff joining us. My drive was in sunshine until entering ice fog the last few miles, but Tom and the others (driving in separate vehicles for separate households) had fog and icy roads their whole drive, a typical indicator of good things to come. And that indicator held true yet again.

With good roads I arrived before Tom and the others, and like the good brother I am, immediately headed to the stream to get a head start on the fishing where I quickly found a bright 17-inch bow swinging a black bead-head bugger (the fly and method that found the most fish today).

Tom and the others soon arrived and we began working our way upstream searching for more. And the same as last year, we found a good number of large, feisty rainbows.  

Brad and Jeff had been lagging behind (not necessarily a bad thing since the fish Tom caught above was found in water I had already fished through), but it's always nice to be fishing fresh water. So we set them up in a run where we found several fish last year, Tom gave some instruction on how to swing through the run, then we headed upstream to some fresh water of our own. We shortly heard some excited shouting coming up to us from downstream and said it sounds like they found one. Sure enough, Jeff had swung up a nice rainbow (the refs threw a flag on the picture for holding, but Jeff looked so happy I just had to photoshop the penalty out of the pic and post it).

A happy face

Just like last year, we found fish scattered all along the way. Tom and I each caught several over 20".

Tom had the largest at just under 23" (escaped before a photo could be taken, but here is another nice one he found).

We also found quite a few "little guys" in the 15 to 18 inch range. All healthy strong fish, many long and acrobatic runs. The black bugger swung was largely the ticket, although Tom also found several nymphing a jig-head October caddis. Another successful Black Fishday in the books!

If Tom had my wicked fish catching skills, he would have had a picture of his 23-incher...