Weather: around 80 and humid.
This trip marked the point where James seemed to cross the line into a little kid version of parallel fishing obsession. He went like a machine all day, didn’t want to stop, didn’t want to turn around, just wanted to keep fishing. The most fish he’d caught prior to this was four. He caught 20 on this trip. It was the first time he wore his new vest given to him for his birthday by my sister. It was the first time he released most of his fish himself.
The stream was in good condition, pretty much as good as when I caught 180 five days earlier, water slightly lower but gin clear. We didn’t go upstream, but went downstream all the way to the bottom pool.
We caught lots of cyprinids. I finished with 82 common shiners and 24 creek chub and James a mix of 20 of them. We saw a couple of trout but got no action at all until the bottom pool, where I had one strike but miss then disappear. That was a bit of a disappointment, but it had been a good day. I packed up James’s rod to make it easier for him to walk back. We’d run out of killer bugs and I was using an amano kebari for want of something else. It worked great, though not quite as good as killer bugs on the cyprinids. I kept my rod out and fished the amano kebari as we went back upstream.
At “trout pool” I got nothing again in the deep run. I took a notion to try the fast water at the head. A nice brown immediately hit the kebari.
Above that stretch of water there were a couple of trout rising in “slow pool”. I got no action but put the kebari into the fast shallow water at the head and once again immediately hooked a trout.
Soon after that I lost the amano kebari in a tree. Which was for the best as it was getting pretty late anyway.
We stopped in Center Point for tea at McDonalds, which is becoming a bit of a post-trip ritual. I wouldn’t normally be caught dead near the Grim Arches, but James is a Happy Meal aficionado. He’s got a bit of the collecting gene from me, and is a sucker for trying to complete the various toy ranges that come in them.
