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knowing it would be my last opportunity to fish DH water while it was still catch-and-release (until october, of course), i set out for wilson creek on sunday long before the sun even thought about hitting the snooze alarm, and i stayed on the water until the last licks of light lapped at the horizon. it was quite the day.
took a couple of friends who were only remotely acquainted with fishing (well, one knew what he was doing) and wound up serving as a pseudo guide for most of the day, setting them up with tackle and gear and handling most of the trout that were caught and hooks that were snagged. i had guaranteed a total of 15 trout (not a tough task at wilson) and we got that done, all three caught between five and nine trout, of all three species. pretty much all of the trout were sitting on a current edge (shocking, right?) and hit on my little 2-inch senkos. a couple hit 2-inch grubs, too. hadn't really tried the pseudo guiding thing, but it was actually a lot of fun, even when i didn't have my own line in the water. who knew? i wound up with a handful in limited casts while they were there, and then caught another dozen or so after they left at 3ish. biggest one, at about 18 inches, came at 8:17 p.m. always fun to get one last big fish at the end of the day, isn't it?
later in the afternoon, i had a mink say hi a couple of times. once, it saw me from across the river, and started swimming directly toward me. right about the time it got close enough for me to start wondering if my 7-foot light-action rod would be enough to shoo it away, it reversed course and swam on down the shore. not 20 minutes later, after i'd moved upstream a bit, i heard a rustling four or five feet behind me. out pops the mink a few seconds later, with a rabbit in its jaws, from the bushes right next to me and it proceeded to swim back across the creek, rabbit secured. very cool moment. wish my pics were better, but only had my phone and had to take it out of the sealed ziploc bag, so i didn't get it until the mink was halfway across the creek.
all in all, a good end to troutin' for a few months. time to turn the attention to smallies in the mountains (toe river/south fork of the new, here i come) and big bluegill and bass and whatever wading streams i can find east of charlotte. there's so much of this state left to explore ...
took a couple of friends who were only remotely acquainted with fishing (well, one knew what he was doing) and wound up serving as a pseudo guide for most of the day, setting them up with tackle and gear and handling most of the trout that were caught and hooks that were snagged. i had guaranteed a total of 15 trout (not a tough task at wilson) and we got that done, all three caught between five and nine trout, of all three species. pretty much all of the trout were sitting on a current edge (shocking, right?) and hit on my little 2-inch senkos. a couple hit 2-inch grubs, too. hadn't really tried the pseudo guiding thing, but it was actually a lot of fun, even when i didn't have my own line in the water. who knew? i wound up with a handful in limited casts while they were there, and then caught another dozen or so after they left at 3ish. biggest one, at about 18 inches, came at 8:17 p.m. always fun to get one last big fish at the end of the day, isn't it?
later in the afternoon, i had a mink say hi a couple of times. once, it saw me from across the river, and started swimming directly toward me. right about the time it got close enough for me to start wondering if my 7-foot light-action rod would be enough to shoo it away, it reversed course and swam on down the shore. not 20 minutes later, after i'd moved upstream a bit, i heard a rustling four or five feet behind me. out pops the mink a few seconds later, with a rabbit in its jaws, from the bushes right next to me and it proceeded to swim back across the creek, rabbit secured. very cool moment. wish my pics were better, but only had my phone and had to take it out of the sealed ziploc bag, so i didn't get it until the mink was halfway across the creek.
all in all, a good end to troutin' for a few months. time to turn the attention to smallies in the mountains (toe river/south fork of the new, here i come) and big bluegill and bass and whatever wading streams i can find east of charlotte. there's so much of this state left to explore ...
