Mid-February 2022

 Fished 2 days with my buddy Hamilton, an outstanding angler from Arkansas.  Both days were low 60-degrees F....beautiful for this time of year!  Kinda breezy one afternoon.

First day...goal was to get me my first ever Chain Pickerel.  Hamilton put me in the right places, I just couldn't get bites.  He caught a couple pretty quickly.  I begrudging used his gear and fly....at his strong suggestion.  It worked!  I lost one that jumped and threw the fly, then finally caught one!  A small one, but it counts!  Very happy to finally get this species added to my flyrod list!

And that was all I caught the entire day.  Hamilton had a stellar day, though, catching 9 species and somewhere over 25 fish total for the day.  The struggle...for me....was real!

Next day, we waded a couple places we'd fished together before.  I struggled less...and had a pretty decent day, catching 7 species, including 2 more new-to-me species.

The new ones were Knobfin Sculpin:

...and a Largescale Stoneroller!  The 3 pictures below are all of the single specimen I caught.

In addition to a few Green Sunfish and a Hybrid Sunfish, I also caught a nice river Largemouth Bass and a feisty Smallmouth Bass:

And a bunch of Rainbow Trout...guesstimating @ 30 or so.

I also accidentally foul-hooked this fish.  Kind of neat looking, so I took a couple pics of it:

And just for fun, I put these two pictures together, to show the difference in markings between a Chain Pickerel (left), and a Grass Pickerel (right).  Both very cool fish!

I've also caught Northern Pike on flies.  I have caught muskies and a tiger musky, but NOT on flies.  So...technically I've caught all the Esox species.  However....Grass Pickerel and Redfin Pickerel are both SUBSPECIES of Esox americanus.  I haven't caught a Redfin Pickerel yet.