Friday, April 6, 2012

Much To My Surprise!

    Went to Cabelas on Wednesday with my Dad to look for a bigger rod and reel. This season I am going to fish streams that hold both brookies and browns or browns and wanted to be prepared in case I hooked into a 20+ incher. In years past I never thought of trying to fish for Browns but after seeing all the photos of such quality fish on DriftlessTroutAngler I decided to pursue brownies myself.  I ended up picking up a 6'6" Abu Garcia medium action rod and a 6930 Pflueger reel (set me back $90).

     On Thursday I headed to a stream that is known to hold nice browns and decided to park at a bridge and wade upstream. The choice of lure was a #9 Panther Martin and my philosophy was to cast into the same holes I would as if I was in a brook trout  stream. I waded upstream for 10 minutes before the first real hole appeared from around the bend. I casted in the lower section of the pool first and hooked into a 12" brookie and was encouraged by what I saw. I moved myself a few paces upstream and positioned myself to cast on the upper side of a log that had fallen across the water. My polarized sunglasses allowed for me to see the bottom of the pool and if anything were following the spinner from out behind the log. I got into position and casted towards the opposite bank and dragged the spinner underneath the log and saw a faint flash in the water as the spinner came out from behind the log into the pool when all of a sudden a massive strike! Sure enough a monster brown (for me at least) ambushed my PM and took my reel for a ride. There were several times I had to adjust my drag to keep tension on the line. I was blown away by the pure strength of this fish and how much of a fight it put up. I grabbed my net and was shocked by the size and depth of the brown. I unhooked the trout unharmed and took a quick tape on the fish, a respectable 21.5”. It wasn't the length necessarily that had me going, but its girth. It didn't take me long to understand why fishing for browns can be so much fun and the anticipation an angler has of hooking into such a miraculous fish. I took a couple of real quick pictures (didn't turn out great) before I released the fish back into the water.





Brookies Galore!

   I took full advantage of some time off and ventured to some of my favorite brookie streams. As always these two streams did not disappoint and on several occasions I had a fish on the line before I had time to reel. Got out for most of the day on Monday jumping from bridge to bridge and I was able to land roughly 45 brookies with the biggest being 13". The trout all seemed to be healthy and no apparent gill lice.
     Ventured out again on Tuesday and had another successful day landing another 30 brooks and 5 browns to hand. The actions picked up in the early afternoon and was steady until I called it quits @ 5:30. Nothing too large just a ton of brookies in the 9-11" inch range and the biggest brown was 14". It was great to get back out after being tied down at work the past week. I was able to snap a couple of photos with my iPhone before a quick release back into the stream.