I headed back out solo to the little protected stream James and I fished a couple of weeks ago. It was raining throughout the drive there, with a forecast of much more to come, possibly the rest of the day and for sure in the evening, with thunderstorms. It was low and dark overcast all day, but the rain stopped as I arrived and held off until 6.30 pm, when I was about done anyway.
On the trip with James, black woolly buggers caught all five fish, so I strung the Rhodo with a number 3 level line and a size 12 bugger. Hm. Things didn’t go quite as planned. I fished upstream to the top of the state land. I saw three trout. Two flashed but didn’t take. A third was hooked for only a second or two. Well…it’s not like it was lights out two weeks ago, I’d only landed two fish to the same point. But streamers really didn’t feel like a lot of fun. At that point I sat down and had lunch. Then I tried a whole bunch of firsts. Because I tried multiple different firsts, I have no idea which factors were more responsible for the successes that followed.
My brand new Suntech Kurenai HM30R was the first of the firsts. James and I passed it back and forth when we opened the package at home, not believing how lovely it felt. I was itching to fish with it, but some of the fish two weeks ago were fairly large (12-13″) so I wasn’t sure whether it was safe. I figured that 6X fluorocarbon tippet (the second first) would protect it. Finer, and lower breaking weight than nylon. Next (purists might want to stop reading here…) I tied a weighted nymph on. I went with a 14 Hare and Copper. Finally (third first) I tied a second nymph in tandem on a 10-12″ tag from the bend. I once said it didn’t feel right to fish more than one fly. Well, today it felt right, so oh well. I used a 16 Black Beauty midge. I started back downstream. First were three small pools and runs in the first 30 yards or so. Cast into the first. Despite using a weighted nymph, the Kurenai was just magic to handle. BAM, fish.
First cast with Kurenai, caught a fish. Day picked up.
It was a small brown, and this would be the pattern. Most of the fish I caught were in the 6-9″ range, which was just perfect for the Kurenai. The first hit the Hare and Copper.
I eventually moved down 20 feet to the next run. First cast, bam, another. This one took the Black Beauty. It continued like that off and on as I moved downstream.
Then the sun flirted with coming out a bit and suddenly fish started to rise. I skirted a nice pool with two trout rising every few seconds. There were biting midges in clouds. I honestly don’t know enough stream entomology to know whether this was what they were rising to or if there was some sort of small mayfly hatch in progress. I couldn’t see any obvious insects on the surface, but there was some serious ongoing rising happening, so something seemed to be in progress. At this point I thought, y’know…. So I got myself into position looking up and across at the rising pair, rigged James’s Fine Mode Kosansui with a 6X nylon tippet and first tried an Adams midge. That went poorly. After a few casts I got the hang of turning over the tippet and fly well enough and putting it where I wanted (been fishing weighted nymphs and streamers forever) but it was ignored. Okay, so I switched to an 18 Griffith’s Gnat. Got a decent drag-free drift with the line out of the water. And a little brown rose out of the water and hit the fly.
Two casts later I caught the second rising trout on the same fly.
So that made me feel just like a real fly fisher. Just as quickly as it started, the rising abruptly ended, and I went back to the tandem nymph rig. I only had one Black Beauty and it got lost fairly quickly. Double the flies means in theory double the chance of fooling the fish. But it also means double the chance to snag and double the number of lost flies. I hit tree after tree, and it was carnage on the fly box. After the Black Beauty I switched to an 18 regular Brassie, lost that before it really had a chance, then had to go with Brassies in 16. Chartreuse and Red ones caught fish, but the majority went for the Hare and Copper, which I fished in both 14 and 16.
I was worried about hooking into a larger fish with the Kurenai. As it turned out, there at least so far don’t seem to be rod safety issues, but there are certainly fish landing issues. I hooked two moderately large trout, somewhere in the 12-14″ range. The tippet held on both and I didn’t feel the rod was in danger. But the fish easily limited out the rod. It bent over and there was just no backbone to steer them. That led to more protracted fights than usual and eventually to both fish escaping. It was really hard to exert will on them and to even get the line in position where I could grab it and handline them. Definitely a small stream rod, but it was perfect for the typical size I was catching, and an utter joy to use. Seven inch fish felt like 10 inch fish.
Toward the end I ran into a school of shiners. I normally sort of work around shiners these days, but I was curious about what they’d feel like on the Kurenai. The answer is a lot of fun.
In the end I caught 18 wild brown trout and 3 common shiners. Two of the trout were caught on a dry fly, the rest on the tandem nymph rig on the Kurenai.
