As the property advertised trout fishing as an activity, we conferred and decided to each take a rod and have a go. Geoff assuring me that our chances were slim to zero without proper fly fishing gear.
On arrival on the Friday arvo, we discovered there was a catch and release dam only 100m from our cottage, so headed down to try our luck. No other gear was taken, no net, lip gripper or pliers ... in hindsight a mistake! I attached a small minnow shallow diving hardbody lure to my line, while Geoff went with a soft plastic.
Threw out my first cast near a bed of reeves and within seconds hooked up a good sized fish that gave a bit of a fight. With nothing to properly retrieve the fish, I had to drag him on to the side of the dam, hoping the light leader wouldn't snap. A beautiful, and slippery, rainbow trout was proudly presented and kissed on the lips to ham it up for the onlooking media. Geoff, who seemed astounded as I was, congratulated me from the other side of the dam and began casting in earnest.
My next cast got me another, of similar size. Geoff kept casting. Then after half a dozen more casts I got my third rainbow trout, again a handsome size, this one managed to get seriously hooked with one treble hook firmly in his lip and the other further in its mouth. Took some work to dehook this one with only my bare hands. It was a bit of a bloody caper and as the dam was clearly signposted as catch and release we put him back in the water hoping it was only a flesh wound. Nothing happened so I gave him a bit of help to get water moving through his gills and he responded somewhat poorly, seemingly preferring to rest belly up in the water, an unusual posture for a fish. Geoff had been snapped off just before or shortly after this (can't quite remember), so we called it a day to go get a beer instead and wished the trout well. He also lost a hardbody trying to get on the scoreboard. I took great pleasure to recount my success with Geoff.
The following day, after an enjoyable night by the fireplace and much merriment, Geoff made a early morning inspection of the dam and found nothing floating on the surface so we assumed he lived! After a hike earlier in the day through the national park, we went back to the dam for another session, this time a bit earlier in the arvo than Friday. It was much quieter and harder work but we persisted. I eventually caught another in the 'barrel' of trout although he snapped my leader as I was trying to get him from the water to the dam bank, taking my trusty minnow lure with him ... no winners in that! Geoff had switched to a hardbody also and also finally landed a good sized rainbow thought, thus avoiding the dreaded donut. Again the complete lack of equipment saw him escape before he could be grabbed for a photo op, fortunately this time not taking the lure with him.
We called it and ended the session as beers and an outdoor fire beckoned. The results ...
We both added new species to our record books;
Without any measuring equipment and as all fish caught were of similar size, we're assuming legal and 1 point per fish, 4 pts to me and 1 to Geoff;
1 pt to Enzo for new species;
So Enzo wins 5 pts to 1, and quite possibly the 2020 championship!
No comments:
Post a Comment