I think I’m pretty much done trying for trout until
Fall. I caught 3 on Saturday morning. It was
a lot of work, but they were pretty nice fish for around here! I measured one chunky
trout at 14.5”, and another was about that length, possibly 15” but a bit
slimmer.
The fights were EPIC on the Allen Olympic 12' 5wt switch rod!!! The 14.5-incher,
I was CERTAIN I’d hooked a big brooder! It dove deep, headed for open
water, came up and made a BIG SWIRL, and was fighting strong! The other
nice one rocketed straight across in front of me, the line was SINGING as it
sliced through the water…faster than a PIKE!!! And then it made some some
absolutely spectacular speeding porpoise-like jumps out of the water. It was
fantastic! Its rare to get such awesome fights out of these stocked fish, but it
certainly shows what they are capable of.
I know there are some good trout still in the lake, but "return on investment" recently has been pretty low. 2 of my last 3 trips there resulted in SKUNKS (likely due to the weather conditions), and overall it seems like the comparatively few trout remaining in the lake have moved out away from shore and into deeper water. I'm not prepared to chase them there yet on fly gear. Hopefully many of them will survive the summer and be even bigger this coming Fall. :) I'm already looking forward to that.
Nice fish! It's about that time of year isn't it...put away the trout gear and start hitting the warmwater. The only trout trip I plan to do this Spring is to venture up to your home state and wander around the Driftless again this year.
ReplyDeleteI'm jealous! I'm incredibly too lazy to drive the 3 hours up to NE Iowa. I'll look forward to reading your blog about your trip! :)
DeleteSounds like a couple of good battles too me, Dave. Not experienced at all in the Switch Rod concept so stories like this one peak my interest. Thanks for sharing.
ReplyDeleteI had my friend Dale G. try casting the switch rod, since he had also been considering buying one. With the Rio Switch Chucker line, he was able to do some really nice long-distance roll casts! Single hand overhead casts will also fire the line out well. There's a number of other good casts to use (that I need to learn!), to add to this rod's versatility. In comparison, I've never been able to roll cast particularly well with my typical WFF fly lines and 9' 5wt fly rods on still waters.
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