Post by Smallfry on Aug 10, 2022 18:31:50 GMT -6
As a last summer hurrah before the kid starts the school year I decided to take a couple of days off for a short trip to Mountain Home to visit a friend of mine. I figured it'd give me a chance to expand beyond my little LMFR trout home. First day out in AR we made the pilgrimage to Dry Run Creek just so I can say I took the kid there. I'd stopped at a fly shop for some fresh 3x (not entirely sure how long the chewed up leader on set up had been there) in hopes of giving the kid a fighting chance. I asked about the creek and was told to have patience, keep changing flies till you figure out what they want and that there was plenty of water to fish. Well, I hate changing flies and that kid has no patience but maybe lady luck would be down there too. We had fun feeding the hatchery fish before we found ourselves wandering creek side. The kid was actually doing good lobbing a hopper trailed by a bead head PT, then plain PT, then dark soft hackle, then light soft hackle, egg pattern and finally settling on a bead PT and pegged egg combo. Desperate times. She had fun with the smaller trout grabbing the egg occasionally and we meandered our way up the creek till we came to a nice little pool with some fast water shooting through it. Babes landed that hopper right in the white water and suddenly one of the numerous river chunks burst through and ate the hopper. Of course she was in shock and was barely holding the rod at that point, the slack bowed in the current and Mr. Trout leapt about a foot out of the pool. My heart almost stopped and I know I made a little sickly "ugh" sound but that hopper held on like a champ. After the acrobatic display that trout took off which helped the slack situation and I talked that kid into holding up the rod, let it run, rod up, reel, reel, reel, let it go again, rod up and so on. Mr. Trout raced back downstream into the pool and then into the net.
Next, I took the lucky hopper to Norfork. It took me longer than I would have liked to figure out what to do there. Eventually some guide in a boat put his clients right in front of me, out of pity I can only imagine, and I got a vague idea of their set up which had hooked 2 fish mere feet from where I my hopper was. I knew then I could put my flies in that run and to add more tippet to my dropper. The new set up worked on a couple of trout but my time had run out so we headed back up the road. The following day we fished in the state park I caught some rainbows on dries, PTs and zebras, yay. That evening after pizza went back to fish a little more and as the sun started setting behind the ridge a brown trout very kindly ate my dry fly, I got pretty excited over that. On our last day I lost my net, again. I was being so lazy that morning I didn't click it to the zinger. I guess a boat wake popped it off the magnet and it just floated off. Anyway, it was a fun visit filled with new sights and stuff. Next time I'm taking a kayak or something.
P.S.
That water was cold! I stood in the current one of those evenings trying to get to a brown that I apparently spooked and after a while my calf muscles started acting funny.
Next, I took the lucky hopper to Norfork. It took me longer than I would have liked to figure out what to do there. Eventually some guide in a boat put his clients right in front of me, out of pity I can only imagine, and I got a vague idea of their set up which had hooked 2 fish mere feet from where I my hopper was. I knew then I could put my flies in that run and to add more tippet to my dropper. The new set up worked on a couple of trout but my time had run out so we headed back up the road. The following day we fished in the state park I caught some rainbows on dries, PTs and zebras, yay. That evening after pizza went back to fish a little more and as the sun started setting behind the ridge a brown trout very kindly ate my dry fly, I got pretty excited over that. On our last day I lost my net, again. I was being so lazy that morning I didn't click it to the zinger. I guess a boat wake popped it off the magnet and it just floated off. Anyway, it was a fun visit filled with new sights and stuff. Next time I'm taking a kayak or something.
P.S.
That water was cold! I stood in the current one of those evenings trying to get to a brown that I apparently spooked and after a while my calf muscles started acting funny.