Back from Trout Camp, and man, it's mid-week already!
To keep some sort of tradition alive, here's a report and some pictures of the trip.
Trout Camp this year was spent in a small committee, but it was an awesome trip! I mean, how can you possibly beat a weekend in great company, with campfire food & fishing?!
I made it to the campground on Friday around 3 PM, set up my tent and went on for a quick fishing fix at Cardiac Hill.
Fished for an hour and a half or so until dark and caught a few stocked bows.
Nothing very special to report here, except maybe my frustration and disappointment with this new brand of 6X fluoro tippet that I was trying out. A respected brand I believe, so I had great expectations. I don't know if this was a bad spool in particular, but man, that thing just sucked! Way too supple in my opinion, which first, made tying on a fly way harder than it should, and second, would lead to tangles and curls in the dropper tag just way too fast. Bad knot resistance too. I even broke off on a hookset! Bref, de la merde, pardon my French.
It's interesting how after a while we anglers seem to become some kind of creatures of habits with certain things, or at least I do. Because that tippet was not the way I like it, my whole ability to catch fish was negatively impacted.
Or maybe it's just that as anglers we always search for an excuse for not catching fish, ha!
Anyways, still a good time being out there and catching a few fish.
Back to camp, I was looking forward to meeting
jlynch . I found an empty camp and shortly after, I read his post on the thread about having to head back home for a car emergency. Sorry for you man, I hope we meet another time!
So Friday night was more like "Gui's Camp" rather than "Trout Camp", but still, I found myself in good company by the campfire.
I spent all day Saturday fishing Spillway, from the Friends' Trail parking lot up to upper Cardiac.
In the morning, the bite was rather slow. I think I brought only a couple of little browns and one bow to the net from 8 AM to about 11 AM.
But then it picked up and that's when I connected with a beauty of a LMFR brown trout.
I'm lucky I got this one on the line, because it was the most subtle take and I basically did not see or feel it.
My sighter was moving very slowly along the edge of a back eddy and at some point it kind of stopped moving. I thought that my anchor had reached the bottom, so I lifted my rod lazily to get it off the bottom. To my surprise, I instantly felt the head shake of a good fish. It worked out this time, but quite the reminder that hook sets are always free... I wouldn't be surprised if at this stage in my learning curve with euro-nymphing I'm still missing 50% or more of the takes.
The colors, with a mix of copper and dark gold, and the large dots pattern on that fish were just incredible.
I hope we meet again, one day...
I took a lunch break shortly after.
I did not top this fish for the rest of the day (which would have been really hard...), but it was a solid afternoon of fishing.
Lot of stockers (especially throughout Cardiac), mixed-in with a few browns and holdover/possibly-wild rainbows. Oh, and a swimming banana as well!
Here are a couple of pics of the better looking ones:
You gotta love it when full-size pectoral fins stick out like airplane wings on the resident bows!
On my way out, I met
ranger1965 at upper Cardiac who was also heading out and gave me ride back to my car. Very much appreciated, thanks David!
Back at camp we met with
jonbo and
Smallfry , for what really was "Trout Camp".
I really enjoyed catching up, hearing the new stories after basically two years since meeting at last Trout Camp, and definitely a weird and challenging year in between.
And we did have a cookout that turned out pretty good!
It was definitely a cold night out there, but that made up with some nice wintery scenery in the morning.
And also here is a proof that there were more than one camper that night!
Packed up, and then we went to Cardiac with
jonbo and
Smallfry .
Fished for 2-3 hours before heading home. The fast water below cardiac was fun, with a bunch of spirited bows and a little brown.
I ended the fishing day on a bright note with this shinny brownie. Good to see that these guys, which I believe were planted there as fingerlings, are doing great and starting to put on some weight.
Thanks again guys for joining this last minute camp and for the good times!
Cheers and tight lines all!
Gui