Those of you familiar with the writings of Patrick McManus may recall a story called "Out of Sync." Well that is how I felt on my first fishing trip since my knee surgery in early Sept. I felt incredibly rusty and made silly mistakes but had a good time. It sure beats doing knee rehab!
I never seem to get to RF early enough to get into the fast water section below the second hatchery so I left Cheney at 4:30 a.m. today. I was the second vehicle to arrive and the first one down in the fast water. Surprisingly, I had this section to my self for 2 hours until somebody else wandered down. I didn't have much luck initially getting the fish to take interest in anything I floated by them. They were feeding on microscopic midges and didn't seem interested in much else. I finally worked above the main hole and floated a big black leach down to the fish. A huge wake starts moving towards my fly and the water exploded but no hookup. I tried drifting it through the hole a few more times but that was my one chance. After a couple hours of frustration, I moved up to my favorite spot on the island. The water was quite high so there wasn't as much of a narrowing current as I like. As a result the fish were spread out a lot more in the head water of the run and I didn't get any hookups casting upstream. A few fish were rising downstream so I switched to a size 16 BWO. On my first cast a nice fish rose and I broke him off on the hook set. Out of sync...... A few casts later I glanced away for a second and missed a rise. Out of sync again... This pattern continued for the next hour with lots of looks but for the life of me I couldn't hook up today. I finished the day in the main pool by the first hatchery. While the rest of stream was starting to get busy, this area was empty. I hooked a nice 22"+ fish on the big leach pattern again. That was my only look up in this area and then it was time to go meet my in-laws for lunch. It is amazing that something you love to do and have done your whole life can become so difficult after a short layoff. Guess I have the perfect excuse to get out more. "Honey, I am starting to forget how to fish. I need to go at least twice a week for the next 6 months to relearn everything!" Yeah, right. Mike W.
