[I’m posting some of my previous fishing journal entries as trip reports – my plan is to write future trip reports directly as they happen on the blog, but I’ve got three months of gaining experience from a standing start in tenkara, so might as well document it. This is a report on the first time we fished in Iowa, and the first time I’d fly fished since I think I was 21 years old. Which is a long time ago.]
Weather: cold first thing in morning, warming to 68 and sunny
Camped with James at Six Pines Campground, Backbone State Park on Friday night. Got there lateish, nearly dark. Set up camp, cooked veggie beef chili on the Coleman, made a fire in the fire pit, James roasted some marshmallows. The chili with half a ciabatta loaf was lovely, but a bit spicy for James. Very cold first night ever of camping, slightly below zero (in the system used in most of the civilized world – I understand cold weather in Celsius and warm weather in Farenheit, literally have to convert back and forth depending), but fine. A raccoon stole the garbage bag at 4.45 am, had to run through brambles in my underwear and bare legs to get it back and put it in the car trunk. Silly to have left it out. The morning was very cold, frost on the Coleman, chairs, tent, car. I made bacon, mushrooms, fried eggs over easy for breakfast on the Coleman along with four cups of Starbucks Colombian coffee.
Off to Richmond Springs at around 9. Naive, I didn’t know that 1) bait fishers with spin rods swarm Backbone any warm weekend and 2) Saturday the 11th was a stocking day at Richmond Springs. Lots and lots and lots of cars and fat dudes (not that I’m exactly a gazelle, I would hasten to add) and dogs. Drove up to the Richmond Springs shelter. First good pool below the springs was free, so we hurried over there with our new rods. Putting on our new polarized sunglasses, we could see lots of smallish trout in the pool. I can’t remember which TenkaraBum fly James fished, but a standard wet kebari fly. James did well with his first ever casting attempts but I probably harangued him too much, especially given that I didn’t exactly have a clue how to effect a tenkara cast. I fished my Tenkara USA Rhodo at maximum 10’3” with a 10 foot 3.5 level line and about a 4 foot 5X tippet. I used an Amano Kebari #12 fly. I caught a ~9” brook trout quite quickly followed by another a shade smaller on the same fly. Then a third. I took photos of the first:
Only got to fish for about 45 minutes, all at the same pool. In addition to the largish brookies, there were quite a few small (~5-7”) paler brown fish which might have been brownies. They occasionally showed interest in the fly. More and more and more bait anglers kept arriving, so there wasn’t much point staying. Still, I caught fish on my very first outing in ~30 years, using brand new unfamiliar tenkara gear. It was an encouraging start.
