Monday, April 29, 2013

Going Beyond "Z"

"My alphabet starts with this letter called yuzz.  It's the letter I use to spell yuzz-a-ma-tuzz.  You'll be sort of surprised what there is to be found once you go beyond 'Z' and start poking around." Dr. Seuss

This was our approach to fishing on this warm, mostly sunny day, as Doug and I fished the Raritan Inn section of the South Branch of the Raritan River Sunday.  The river was a little low, but certainly not too low for fishing, and very clear.  The low water and the fact that we fished through the heart of the day, made for some challenges for both of us. For Doug, who spent the day nymphing, the low water had him continually adjusting the amount of weight he used on his leader in order to get his flies down to the fish without getting hung up on the bottom to often.  I on the other hand, spent the day fishing dry flies, and there were fish rising fairly steadily, but there weren't too many bugs on the water so it was hard to pin-point what the fish were feeding on.  At the end of the day, we both went beyond "Z", poked around, and found we had figured things out well enough that we both finished with better than average days.  


Doug, who typically uses a combination of weighted nymphs, had to resort to a set up that consisted of a bead head nymph trailed by an unweighted, tan/ginger colored scud.  At the deeper holes, he added split shot to improve his drift.  And the scud was the ticket, I think that's the only fly that took fish for him.  He hooked a bunch of fish and landed quite a few, including a 25" plus rainbow he managed to tangle with for a good 5 minutes before it parted ways with him and the 6X tippet he ran to his trailing scud.  I think I even heard him whispering some unusual foreign language under his breath after that one.  Here's a nice chunky rainbow I netted for him. 


Throughout the day there were small grannoms hatching and egg-laying, mostly in the #26-28 size range.  Occasionally a wave of them would come off, prompting some steadily rising fish for brief periods.  We also observed rusty spinners, craneflies, and a few late to the table Hendrickson duns.  After putting a size #16 caribou caddis, followed by a spent caddis, and even a rusty spinner in the feeding lanes of a number of fish, without so much as a peek from our spotted quarry, I went beyond "Z" and tied a #14 pheazant tail soft hackle emerger to the end of my 6x tippet.  I fished this fly right on top of the thin line, and was soon rewarded with a pretty, 12 inch rainbow.  From then on, I continued to fish the fly will many nice fish coming to hand.  Here's a nice brown trout that took the fly like candy next to a bank side rock. "YEZ!"       


Here's one of the pheazant tail soft hackle emergers I used today complete with knotted tippet end still tied to the eye.  This one will go in the journal under today's entry, which will be cataloged under "Z" and beyond. It took a nice 20" finely spotted, hen rainbow.


So, as you can see, Doug and I, went beyond"Z".  And if you think about this enough, you will also see, we must often go beyond "Z", fairly frequently.

1 comment:

Mr. Q said...

Nice story....you are nutZ....