The Legend and I hit “The System” as TheWylie likes to call it. We had some Hendrickson spinners in the morning, I assume because they had storms the night before.

But the bright sun kept the risers down so we nymphed up a few stocked rubber trout. They were good sized but I was a bit dissapointed because I didn’t realise the state stocked the System.

I told The Legend that we needed to go find some real trout and we headed off down the road. We looked at a few new spots and decided on a likely stretch.

There were some March Browns flying around and I tied one on to chase a splashy rise at the bottom of a riffle. Paydirt…and a bit better fish. One that jumped 3 times and had all it’s fins…a step in the right direction.

Then things slowed down. The Legend missed a fish in a riffle on a nymph and risers were slow to come.

There was one fish in the slower slick that was rising all morning. I tried him for about an hour. standing over him, putting him down, waiting him out and putting him down again.

We walked about a mile downstream and back up missing a few fish, seeing some great water, and all the while, everytime we traveled by the slick he was happily slurping whatever it was he was slurping.

At about 4pm, we took a quick break and went to the store. What we should have down is find a new spot but we both stubbornly insisted that the water looked too good to not have it happen here.

WHen we returned there was a drift boat anchored over the fish…that same fish. We crossed the river and went downstream to the bottom pool and found some rising fish promptly missing them and putting them down. I started back upstream to the top pool and intersected the drift boat coming downstream. The guide shouted out that there was a good fish up in the pool happily rising and that they couldn’t figure them out. I told him about my hour in the morning on the fish and he offered a $50 bill if I could catch him. I told him to tell me his number and email but he pretended he didn’t hear me and kept on floating.

I set up on that fish alittle after 6pm. He was still rising and I showed him just about everything in the box to no avail. He kept rising every 15-30 seconds and every 5 to 10 minutes, he would take a break for 5 minutes and then start rising again. Unfortunately he was the only fish around feeding so I stood over him for another 2 hours taking a few breaks to search for ither riser when I would get really frustrated.

After it started to really get dark, I panicked and headed up to the riffles…no risers, I headed back down and noticed the fish had changed modes. Now he was rising every 3 seconds, sometimes even swimming with his back out of the water vacuuming the top. I set up slightly upstream and sent a march brown spinner in his lane, we had seen some in the air but I don’t think they had hit the water yet. He rose 5 times in about 3 seconds…rise, rise, rise, rise and with the fifth rise he sucked down the spinner….fish on! And he screamed across the pool.

After a good battle, I had him close to me and I still thought he wasn’t that big until he swam closer and I muttered to the Legend, He’s Huge.

Finally I had him in the net.

The most impressive aspect of the fish was the girth…he was 19 maybe 20 inches long but had to be 4 1/2, 5lbs..

Impressive fish and somebody owes me $50.