Fall Steel

This rocket ship of a hen crushed my Aquatic Nuisance style Bad Hair Day. Nice hook set and then she took off. Some lighting fast runs and amazing classic acrobatics. After putting a little pressure on her, trying turn her back towards me, she burst into the shallow water and amazingly beached herself right where I normally try to land bigger fish in this run. Snapped a few photos and a got her back into the current. She was pretty exhausted. It was really neat to watch her for a little while under water as I was reviving her in the current. Such amazing looking fish. In the future I think I'm just going to try to tail fish in the current and snap a few photos rather than walking them towards a shallow bank. It's so much better for the fish and just looks neater, plus the photos that I take at the bank usually suck anyways.

First Day of Fall Coho

My buddy Jason stayed over, we fished and scouted the Rouge the day before. Up at 5am on Sunday, grabbed the best run we found special-opps style. Fish were stirring, but nothing consistent until a little after first light. I tried swinging a black and blue bad hair day, and then some comets with no luck. After seeing a couple fish breaking the surface, I tied on a moose hair muddler. This hen took it on the hang down.

Shortly after Jason tied on a strange double fly/spawn bag rig he had pulled out of snag. We were pretty sure this is what the father and son were using that we'd watched fish this run yesterday. A spawn bag, two small simple old school looking streamers with mallard wings and the remnants of wax worms on the hooks. I handed him a Thing-a-ma-bobber that I randomly happen to have in my pocket. This was more of a joke than anything, but amazing he landed a real nice little Rouge brown on it.