FISH CATCHING TRAVEL
You can not beat the sunsets. Of course some of it is residual smoke from the fires further west.
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The Wade Right Fishing Belt and the new Madre Sling.
For all your wading needs.
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The entrance to the ranch.
What a place. Fifth generation homestead.
First one, the rest basically stayed in the net. And very easy to get off using barbless.
You know what was my favorite part of the day? The way I ended up catching them. Dry fly, San Juan worm with an indicator, and stripping a Wooley Bugger. Before I finally gave out wading around 15 give or take a couple jumped on and I got sunburned. It does not get any better than that.
The ranch is basically an island, which is weird, but the North and South arms of the Rio Grande go around the property, and with it you have a mile of water basically to yourself. And I met the owner on the way in, great guy who is keeping the homestead alive as his great (I think.) Grandads legacy, it has been continually owned by the family for over 100 years. And best of all, the water was perfect and wading conditions not to bad for an old man.
Most were like this and only a couple small like the second one out of over a dozen.
I met Ian yesterday who gave me a tip, which turned out to be the only thing I could not catch them on, a nymph. Now mind you I am so a beginner but I made a good choice early, totally by accident. He said the dry fishing was poor but starting with a dry and a nymph dropper (Listen to me talking all fly fishing!) turned out to be perfect. My second cast one blew up all over the dry fly, which our resident Fayette guru Rusty tied for me.
Of course totally out of practice I missed at least 4 before I started hooking up. Unfortunately I lost a pretty big one trying to get my stuff together, trying to get the on the reel to fast, but at least 4 or 5 actually made the net. Then I could not buy a bite on a dry or the nymph so time for an old standby, the Wooley Bugger. I was stripping it, twitch, twitch, and when they hit it they stopped it. Have never used it that way and it was fun. And that put 4 or 5 in the net.
Hard to take pictures of them and manage the fly rod. Still a new thing for me.
When it slowed down I used another old favorite the San Juan worm with 2 beads and a foam indicator. And about the same amount of trout jumped on that. When they stopped the worm they were on, I missed far less on the worm. The couple of big ones that did jump off today were good fish, I attribute that to being rusty. But nice to break in the 3 wt, perfect for that stream. If at the end of this trip I fished that same river again it would be another story. So all in all a good day. I will fill you in the next day or two on the company I used to book the ranch, so you can check them out.
I am tired and watching the game, hope I make the end, so this is the short version. In South Fork now and already have the map out. It will be few lakes and rivers I have fished before and lots of new. Probably tomorrow head out early for a place on the river where I have had some luck in the past. With the weekend coming will probably hit the lakes some and wait for the rest of the fly guys to go home or back to work and back at the fly fishing on Monday. So keep stopping in and thanks for reading my stuff.
Good Luck and Tight Lines
