Evening on Big Spring

With sulphurs pretty much peaked out for the year, thought I'd head over to Big Spring and give the Letort a rest. Hit the lower end of the regulation water around 6:30ish and harassed a few large 'bows until they tired of my antics. Saw a rise under the shrubbery, tied on a #16 sulphur dun and hooked a nice fat brookie in short order. After his release, there was another rise but the sulphur dun was ignored. Tied on a goofy sparkly cdc emerger and got a take on the first drift...another nice brookie.


But these two brookies were kinda rough looking for wild fish I thought, maybe they had moved up from the stocked water which wasn't far below from where I was fishing?

Saw a few more rises here and there, so repostitioned & rerigged and ended up missing a couple takes before hooking into what would've been my big fish for the year. He took a #16 sulphur on the first drift and on that first run for safety wrapped the line around the unseen submerged sticked he was using for cover. Popped the 6x just like that, drat.

Re-rigged again, sun was getting quite low now, so worked up into some flat water where I was seeing more regular, though still sporadic rises. Eventually settled into the flow thru a set of old V dam rocks and picked up a small parr marked 'bow on a sulphur dun, but kept hearing a rather impressive gulumph at the head of the run.

Broke out the headlamp and tied on a #14 sulphur spinner. Casting on faith and feel into the darkness, heard the slurp, set into it and instantly the Hardy was singing her sweet tune. Nice fish, this one....just topping the one that had broken me off earlier. Kinda hard to get a decent pic being solo, but based on the size of my net, this 'bow was easily 19".

9:45, time for a beer, what an evening on the water!