Feb 25 - Mystery Fly

[gui]

Last Saturday was the 2023 Mystery Fly tournament. I had a great time, met some good friends and took a few fish pics, so I thought I would post a report if I get the chance to do it before too much time goes by. 

So here it is.

For those who don't know about the tournament, it is fun annual fundraising event organized by the Lower Mountain Fork River Foundation. Each participant is given the same fly (you can purchase a couple additional "Mulligans") and you don't know what the fly is until right before the start of the tournament, hence the "mystery fly" name. You are paired with another contestant who makes sure that you report the number and size of your catches correctly, and reciprocally.

This year the fly was a good looking hare's ear variation tied on a jig hook:



I was paired with good "trout camp" friends Smallfry and jonbo , and had such a great time catching up and fishing with them.

We started at Hickory below the Evening Hole bridge.

For my part, I was using my euro rod and micro leader setup with added split shot as needed.

I quickly had a bunch of bites but somehow could not land any fish for the life of me... I think I long-distance released four of them from under the bridge area and had a couple more missed hooksets on hits.

We then moved a bit further downstream with limited success, even though the deep channels there looked very fishy.
I still landed one small bow though, and got on the board.

After this, we moved to the Evening Hole and up to the fast water by the rock pile (if it's still called like that).
It's been years actually since I've fished that area. It looked pretty good and fishy, especially with the water a little tinted from recent rain. Some nice narrow and deeper runs for nymphing. Watch out for the overhanging trees though!

I caught 5-6 stocked rainbows over that Evening Hole section and that little stocky brownie shown below with the mystery fly in her mouth, for good measure 



Let's meet again when your fins are full!

Around 9:50 AM we decided to move to one last spot before the end of the tournament.
And so up Spillway at Cardiac we went.

Cardiac was fun and fished quite well. I love it there when the water is a bit high and slightly tinted like it was. Spillway is also where I've been fishing almost exclusively since the big 2015 flood, so I guess it is basically my "home" water at this point.

Some chunky bows were willing to play, and it was good fun fighting them around rocks and in the faster water. A couple of feisty ones managed to get off the hook, but I landed some with the best one pushing a little over the 16" mark.
Thanks for the ride stockies!
Another little brown made it to the score card too.









Fishing was still hot when we had to leave Cardiac to make it back to the fly shop bridge on time before 11:30 AM and return the score cards without penalty. I ended up with something like 20-21 fish and 32 points.

At this point I was thinking that I did pretty well, until I found out others did much better!

I finished at the 4th place, golferjeff was 3rd place and his tournament partner Marshall killed it with something like 36 fish and 56 points (I think) and bragging rights as the 2023 Mystery Fly winner!
That's a lot of fish in one morning of fishing!! Nicely done!

As I said, this is really a fun event with some great prizes for the winner/top seeded and everyone also gets something. I believe the winner this year was a Mystery Fly "first-timer", so if you're thinking about it, you should definitely participate next year!
Check out the foundation page here for more info on membership, donations, etc.

After the tournament, I went back to Spillway and fished around the mid section for a few hours before heading back home. Some rainbows, including a bruiser stocker, and a couple small browns kept the fun going.

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I kept the pic of my best fish for the end, which was actually caught the day before on Friday. And so here is the little story:

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I made it to the park on Friday around noon and met golferjeff . We had a quick lunch by the fly shop and it was nice catching up.
We then went up to lower Spillway and, after some euro leader untangling in the parking lot , we proceeded with some fishing.

Some bows made it to the net for me, as well as for Jeff after he gave up on euro "nymphing" and switched to euro "dry-dropping".
Jeff then had to leave around 3 PM and I kept fishing my way up, with a few bows here and there along the way.

Smallfry was upstream of me and we met and chatted a bit stream side before she went downstream and I continued upstream. Of course, we had talked about the brown trout. And so I was all dialed in, hoping for a good one to show up at the end of my line at any moment.

The wishful thinking became reality.

A good tug followed by a head shake that felt different from the bows I had been catching until then.

She made a run upstream, and then to my surprise, went up to the surface and turned around towards me in a very well-behaved manner, almost like a good dog on leash.
I thought it was wayyy too early, but I took my chance and pulled out the net as she was gently swimming towards me. This ended up being one of the smoothest and quickest fish scoop ever!

This fish was in great shape, with some of that blue hue starting to show up on her cheek.



Still not the big one, but I love the opportunity to catch and admire these beautiful fish.


Until next time!


Gui

[jonbo]

Great write-up, Gui! It went just as Gui said, except that he left out the part where he caught all the fish -I mean, ALL the fish. I bobber-nymphed with my hare's earsy assigned jig fly without any luck.

I gradually spectated more and more, watching Gui's euro-nymphing style. It was good for me to see. I think I learned something about the euro-style of fly-fishing that I had been missing in my less-than-effective approach that I have documented elsewhere. Gui was very precise and careful with the connections between his rod hand, his line hand, the rod tip, the leader, and, I assume, his fly. The angle of the leader, as far as I could see, was at least approximately the same about all the time, as was the bow in it. This he achieved right away once his fly was in the water. During the drift his rod didn't jerk around as mine's been known to, but stayed even-looking. His line hand stayed pretty busy. On Spillway, he moved pocket to pocket, catching at least a couple of fish from each. So, for me, although I did as poorly in the tournament as it's possible to do, I had a really good day as I had been really wanting to watch someone successfully and skillfully euro-nymph fish.

Another thing this reminded me, and I'd like to relate to those, not mostly who post here because they know better, but to those who may read the stuff here but haven't spent enough time on the water to know for themselves, is that there are plenty of trout in the LMF. It's all in your technique in fishing for them. Gui was catching fish everywhere where I wasn't. Ms Roberta has told me that some go into the shop and complain there's no fish. What they're really complaining about is they can't find a large pod of freshly planted trout that will sample anything that drifts past them. When the river hasn't been stocked in a bit, or one can't find that newbie-pod, there's still plenty of fish in there, but they tend to be somewhat "educated", ie, they take some work and technique to fool.

Good job, gui! Jonbo, out.

[golferjeff]

Marshall Moore was the winner's name. He helped me catch a few Friday afternoon and I told him about the LMFRF and the meeting. He asked a hundred questions, but I had a 22" bow landed, so I was in a mood to answer them all. He ended up joining the foundation, came to the meeting, won the MYstery Fly, took home a bunch of prizes, and he should be a first-time father sometime very soon. I think he caught 35 or 36 fish and the area we were fishing was loaded with fat holdovers. I caught 20 and got 3rd place due to the size of some of the rainbows. For the 10 or so MF's I Have fished, I think this was by far the most fish ever caught, by everyone (Except JOnbo apparently). Back to Euro-ing Jon!

I had my girlfriend in tow for the weekend and she got in on the action Sunday. She caught 10 or 12 nice rainbows and one nasty looking sucker/stoneroller. I kid you not, I stood in a spot about the size of a car and caught about a hundred - wild rainbows, holdovers, fresh stockers, swimming bananas, a little brown, 2 lamprey, and even a largemouth bass. We enjoyed having the stop logs out, if even just for a little while. Big fish had moved up from downstream. Pics coming.....