Its All Fishing

The other evening I met a new friend and fishing partner. Another one of those internet forum generated things that seem to be happening more lately. The internet is like having a whole bunch of pen pals and some of those may be close enough to allow for a meet and fish or some such.

Reed is a very interesting gentleman, but doesn’t much like his picture taken. I suspect its either that some foreign government has been on the lookout for him or maybe he thinks his brain will be sucked into the matrix of the digital reality of bits and bytes. I’m not sure which of the two, but I could tell that he was pretty serious about the whole thing so I’ll honor his reasons and refrain from posting any identifiable images.

We fished the evening hatches from about 7:00 until nearly 8:30, I believe it was. Anyway, it was getting hard to see and we were wading about rocks and boulders in moving water, so it seemed prudent to vacate to the car and a cold beverage. And we did.

A bunch of fish were caught by the both of us. Most of them were New Hampshire Grayling as Reed says and though not large, pretty good fighters and its always good to feel the tug on the fly line and bring a fish to net.

There were some trout rising after a while and Reed caught a nice brown and also a smallie for good measure. By the grin on his face, I got the impression that he likes those small mouth bass. I manned the net and between the current and that feisty smallie we net chased him like a couple of keystone cops for a couple of minutes there. Good fun.

Reed let me fish his beautiful 4 wt cane rod for awhile and I was pleasantly surprised at how deftly it sets a dry down onto the water. Like buttah. Smooth and easy. The casting stroke takes some getting used to after having fished graphite for years, but its something that I could get used to and enjoy. I had cast a cane rod only once before a couple of weeks ago, but only for a few moments. The deal (or I should say the phrase) with these classic old cane rods is ‘slow down’. Take a deep breath and slow the internal motor down a few notches. Not a bad thing.

The fish were taking a grey bi-visible, small caddis, a small stimulator and a prince nymph at one point.

Great conversation and great fishing!

A few pics of a non-revealing nature.