Well, Me and Rick were minus our pal Merc today...So, we felt lucky..
Rick FINALLY had his new rod with him...a beautiful 3106L and as usual, He said..."Well, new rod, gonna catch a fish"..Which so far has been damn near true....We hit a spot we haven't tried much this year and sure enough...Second cast..."Fish On"...I was dumbfounded how this always happens with Rick...Fish was a silver bar jumping and splashing around the river...Rick got her in nicely and let me tail her, take pic's and release her...NICE wild Doe...
I am super pumped seeing a fish finally so we fish this run pretty hard...unfortunately no more for us there.... Saw a couple guys get some hatchery's way down the run and I took one guys pic with his...and they were done after a half hour fishing...
Rick says. "OK, enough Mr. Fence post, lets go"....So we head off to other stamping grounds...As I picked the first spot, Rick gets to choose the second...So we head up river...We stop at where we originally planned to fish but it is crowded and an old guy wandering out says, "Lots of guys, No fish"...So we head back down...We stop at some pocket water and are debating on what to do...Finally we decide, to hell with it, were here, lets fish...We do our new fish chant and off we go....I'm having my usual luck in pocket water and donate all my spinners and a pink worm to the mess.....I'm getting a bit frustrated...I'm not that good in pocket water...but we move our way down and I find some nice water that a beek like me can fish...Rick is again the first one into a fish but it pops off .... Rick says "See there are fish in this river" and my spirits start to rise....I find a nice fishy looking piece of water and make a cast that even I was in awe of....float goes about 5 feet and WHAM..down it goes...I set the hook and this freaking pig just starts to go nuts on me...
There is a major snag and my line goes right into it...I thought, Well, there he goes...But the fish gods were smiling on me for a change and he decides to clear the water for about two feet and takes the line off the snag with his jump....I'm sitting there thinking "Man, This is freaking cool"...Rick comes down and does his best guide job on me and calms me down and gets me focusing on the fight....OK, Now I've watched Rick bring his fish in , in like 2 minutes flat, so I'm expecting pig boy to do the same....NOPE...This fish has other plans for me...He takes off down river on multiple jumps and rips all over the river....This was a half a cigar fish, He took me about a half mile down stream and over 20 minutes to land...Every time I think he's tired and ready to come in....He just sulks behind a boulder for a few seconds and then off on another hand burn and another 100 feet of line goes out....Man, this fish kicked my butt...I had to shake my arm a couple times to get the blood back in it....Rick, thank God, is no rookie and talked me down river and we finally brought him in....A beautiful wild buck...Man, I was so pumped...FINALLY!!! a real steelhead..and I didn't bust him off, like the last one...
We fish a little more and I'm just beaming like a little kid, Rick is high fiving me and we are finally on a day when we are all into fish....
We head down river and run into Winston, we is nice enough to take the old guys on a tour of some nice spots....We had a couple bumps and I thought maybe this would be a multple fish day..but nothing else wanted to test our gear...
All in all, another great day, great cigars, many smiles...only thing missing was T.O. and getting him into some pigs as well...
Ricks bar again..
Lastly, RIck says that this is a tradition...I don't know if its true or not...but I'm not argueing..this was done in a second so don't freak on me....This buck by the way, when I went to release him...I was worried that it took me so long to land, would be tired out...I put him in the water and he promptly sprayed water all over my face and took off like a bat out of hell...Man these fish ARE impressive...
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Topic: March Madness on the Vedder. 3-4-07 (Read 7232 times)