I do believe this to be true, however it is desirable, when driving 2 hours one-way, to stack the odds in successes favor as much as possible in trip planning.
Planned on fishing the Lower Illinois this morning as I had a day off work, it was recently "re-opened" as conditions have been stabilized somewhat, and they had just stocked trout last friday. However, as I rounded the corner into the parking area this morning I realized I had made a rookie mistake. I should have checked the streamflows before making the two-hour drive.
had I done that I would have seen a graph similar to this....
and would have known that the river was running at about 11.5 feet and at about 4000 ft3/second. Needless to say, difficult fishing.
However, since I do believe that every day fishing, is a good day and I am stubborn enough to believe that all conditions can be conquered, I made up my mind to find somewhere to land a stocker. Went up by the dam and there is a small side pool that today looked like a large side eddy. After about 15 casts, using a black b/h wooly bugger, i had a strike but no hookup. An hour and a half later after throwing about everything else in my fly box, I put on a size 12 prince with some red thread wrapped around the back end. Two tosses and bam, hooked and played a beautiful little stocker rainbow.
After playing him in and releasing him I decided to hang em up for today, satisfied that even given my rookie blunder of the morning, I managed to catch a trout.
Like they say, Every Day fishing is a Good Day Fishing.
Planned on fishing the Lower Illinois this morning as I had a day off work, it was recently "re-opened" as conditions have been stabilized somewhat, and they had just stocked trout last friday. However, as I rounded the corner into the parking area this morning I realized I had made a rookie mistake. I should have checked the streamflows before making the two-hour drive.
had I done that I would have seen a graph similar to this....
and would have known that the river was running at about 11.5 feet and at about 4000 ft3/second. Needless to say, difficult fishing.
However, since I do believe that every day fishing, is a good day and I am stubborn enough to believe that all conditions can be conquered, I made up my mind to find somewhere to land a stocker. Went up by the dam and there is a small side pool that today looked like a large side eddy. After about 15 casts, using a black b/h wooly bugger, i had a strike but no hookup. An hour and a half later after throwing about everything else in my fly box, I put on a size 12 prince with some red thread wrapped around the back end. Two tosses and bam, hooked and played a beautiful little stocker rainbow.
After playing him in and releasing him I decided to hang em up for today, satisfied that even given my rookie blunder of the morning, I managed to catch a trout.
Like they say, Every Day fishing is a Good Day Fishing.
No comments:
Post a Comment