Dream Comes True

I have always had a dream, even before fulltiming, of catching a mountain stream trout and eating it.  Now with time the eating eat part has faded, but the dream of catching trout was still there.  With the advent of the fulltiming thing I thought that it was even more possible especially seeing Howard catching some in the places he has been.  Well as my previous post indicates (note: this is the second post for the day) I was licensed, outfitted and ready. 

My neighbors left at good daylight, but I wanted to clean the front of the MH first.  We (Carolyn was my photographer and the person that was going to try to catch me downstream) left about 1030.  We drove trying to find the perfect access so she could watch and I wouldn't have to much trouble, and there wasn't anybody around to see my first foray into fly fishing.

We found a place and got Carolyn set up in her chair.  I proceeded to enter the water and hadn't gone 15' when I slipped on the rocks and down I went.  I had my hunting waders on and I believe the clod hopper boots weren't made for nimble rock movement.  Plus these were 12" to 18" rocks to maneuver over.  Lucky for me their high and I didn't get to wet.  Downer was the vest I got seems to hold water. :(  I figured out how to empty most of that out and proceeded on.

Learned an important fact.  Walkie Talkies need to be in plastic bags, as they do not do well submerged in water. :(  It is now in a bowl submerged in rice to try and dry it out.  We'll see.

I wasn't to far from the bank and kept hitting the limbs behind me.  It took me about 30 minutes to hang my fly in a tree and that was that.  Now I had to come to the bank and recreate what these other neighbors had done for me in sitting me up.  I'm here to tell you that I tied another fly on with a perfect knot (note here: Knots are important in fly fishing). 

I put the purple haze on the guy in the store said they were hitting and got back to it.  After another 30 minutes I caught my first ever trout.  My trusty photographer wasn't ready, but came on strong.  I told her to get a picture, she said, "I can't see the fish".  To heck with the fish, its in the water take pictures of me, you can't take to many.  Well, we worked through all that and came up with a couple of pictures.  A nice rainbow trout.

Carolyn trying to find the fish.

The second spot was nicer and allowed me more movement.  The first place had me in to deep of water which added my imbalance.

The day was nice, got some experience, caught a fish, got 4 other bites and only fell in 3 times.  Carolyn wasn't ready the other two, but caught me after I got up.  She says I got up to fast, I told her the water temp was 61 deg and it was cold.

Back at the MH drying out and warming up.  Probably will go back tomorrow. 

PS - my neighbors only caught 1 fish out of 3 people.  :)

Life is pretty good.