North of the Border - Day 4, The Return Home

Last day of the trip and nobody wants to leave…as always. Hitting the water was refreshing this morning. Rigging up with a dry might not be the most effective way to catch on this day, after the hatch, but it’s the action we are targeting not the numbers. Met some good ol' boys on the launch. One of them just so happened to be Pat, who is the creator of the "Bennet Stone" or "Pat's Stone" or to those that don't know the" rubber legs". It was pretty cool to hear about the history of that fly and learn of its original name. I also found it interesting that the leg color cannot be bought anywhere and is specifically colored for that pattern…. figures. Fishing was OK, but it was expected to be that way, we were just hopeful for a miracle. Grizz brought some up fish and I spent the morning in tangles trying to nymph, yes, I went against my plan and now I'm paying for it and I lost a ton of bugs in the process. We fished to our take out and headed home… but first a quick stop.

At the last second we turned off the main road and headed for the lake. Upon arrival we observed zero wind and only 4 guys out. It took us about 2 minutes to be in the boat and on our way to the trees. The first spot we slowly figured it out and the second spot seemed to be the ticket. I was more interested in the birds that were nesting in the trees to be honest and I had the camera in hand most of the time. There were a couple youngsters in each nest chirping; at times it was pretty loud. The adults would take turns in feeding them and then it was really loud. It was pretty cool to watch in fact it was amazing. About that time, my bobber or indicator or whatever you must call it, moved… fish? I started taking in the slack went off to the right side of the boat a fish burst out of the water… holy Sh**! My first thought was that the fish were starting to be active, going nuts and then I felt the tug, that jumping fish was actually mine! We laughed and joked about the fish hooking themselves. Each time I set the rod down to shoot the birds it seemed that I would get a strike. I would loose fish and we would just laugh about it.

Grizz started picking up fish and for the next few hours we were entertained. Although, the two other guys near us were probably not thrilled with us. They were in better position but we could hear, and see, that they weren’t figuring it out. Each time the wind blew it would create a little disturbance on the water. This interruption would lift or jig the flies beneath the thing-a-ma-bobber, which would result in a strike. We were hoping for wind each time it went calm and I think the guys next door could hear us yelling for wind and laughing…it pretty much irritated them, that and the fact we were catching and losing fish and they were not. We each got another and we left for home, fantastic trip once again.