I like turtles.

January 23rd, 2010:

I'll admit that on this particular saturday I sat around on my fat arse building flies while I should have been ruining those flies in some trout maw -- but by noon I shook off my laziness and hit the water as I couldn't stop thinking of all the monster browns I've been seeing lately. It was honestly a bit of a strange day as I encountered interesting people along the way, caught a lot of deformed fish, and found someones pet turtle swimming around. In fact the biggest fish of the day ended up being one I caught with my hands. You see, I was slowly working my way along the river when I noticed a dark shape right near the banks. Turns out to be a fish-- I walked up close to it, half expecting it to spook, and dangled some flies in its face... no response. It was clearly alive but it didn't budge as I stepped into the water and proceeded to pick it up with my hands.

Sorry for the retarded sound track... my commentary was worse, I promise (plus the video makes me laugh this way...). As you can see, it ended up being a giant brown trout in the 25" range that woke up and swam away once I put it back in the water. Clearly it wasn't a healthy fish-- if only I could legitimately put a healthier brown like that onto a fly... anyways... after that, the fishing started out slow and I adjusted my rig four or five times before I finally got a subtle take wayyy downstream of me and I hauled in an arms length of line just to set the hook on a fairly heavy fish. It stayed deep and mostly just shook it's head-- could it be a brown trout? Indeed it was and I was overly excited to finally have another brown trout in hand-- it taped at 20" long although it was a bit on the skinny side. I didn't care.

The fish took a #18 bwo nymph (which I will post later) dropped below #14 hotwire prince nymph. After that I landed 4 or 5 cuttbows in the 16-18" range while some guy was trying to talk to me across the river. I was annoyed at first but he turned out to be a super nice guy that basically was using fishing to stay out of trouble with substance abuse (strangely, I met two guys this weekend with that strategy...). Most of the fish I caught had deformities of some sort (mostly goofy looking jaws) but all were fat and otherwise seemed pretty healthy.


After a while I decided to move on to less accessible water and on the way out I almost stepped on... a turtle?! I have no idea how this thing managed to stay alive in the icey waters of the truckee but the guy I was talking to said he used to keep them as pets-- I handed it to him and he let it go, as neither of us really wanted a pet turtle:


Moving on, I drove to a new spot and hiked through quite a bit of water until I found a nice big pool. I stumbled upon someone's camp under a bridge on the way--- always a bit disconcerting-- and this person had definitely been set up there for a while-- nice tent, campfire ring, clothes line and bathing pool in a little side-stream. I need to get out of town. Regardless, there was yet beauty to be found and the fishing was great. I landed 3 cuttbows that taped at 19" (three! no joke) and a couple of smaller fish. I also hooked and landed a feisty 20" cuttbow that was sort of the highlight for me as it fought like mad (it even jumped, despite the frigid water) and had beautiful colors and proportions. All these fish, save one, took the prince nymph. The other fish took the bwo nymph, with none taking the black aggravator nymph that was my lead fly. This river kicks ass. So does winter fishing.

The days highlight: