While the Texas Gulf was watching hurricane Ike, I was home doing bills and other boring things. Around Noon I got a call from a fellow Tightlines Fly Fishing club member. He called to see what I was up to since we had not talked in weeks. He said that he was on the way over to the White River below Bull Shoals since they had shutdown the dam. A dam on the White River system that is not generating is a rare phenomenon thing this year. Needless to say there has been very little Trout fishing this year unless you have a boat and want to fish high water. Shortly after hanging up the phone, I decided to join him and head over. Arriving at the river at 3:30, I figured we had until 7:30 to fish this spot as they had turned the generation back on at 3pm. Being 12 miles below the dam, 4 hours is the estimated time that the water would arrive, making wading tough if not impossible.
The weather was not very good. Foggy, rainy etc etc being on the edge of what was left of Ike. I caught a nice Rainbow right off the bat and then lived through a dry spell while I searched for more fish and the right fly.
I finally found a spot where there was a couple fish rising every so often. Not enough to indicate a hatch. but enough to indicate a fish was actually in the area. afer going through a few flies, I put on a Red #16 Copper Jon. Eureka, a hit on the 2nd cast. Lading that fish and making another cast, I hooked another an my tippet broke, leaving me with one less Copper Jon which are hard for me to tie. I tries a Zebra Copper Jon, and had little luck. There’s a saying that gos something like “It’s not good to leave fish to find fish.” I decided to change flies to a different pattern when you just broke off a fish on the previous pattern, is not the smartest thing to do either. So it was back to the Red Copper John (RCJ). Another fish . . . . then another . . . I ended up catching a fish on almost every third cast. The first few were good fat Rainbows about 14 inches. Then something interesting happened. Each successive fish was getting smaller and smaller. When the last one hit about 8 inches I decided to move upstream about 30 ft to try a fresh part of the current seam I was fishing.
The first cast in this spot felt like it hung on the bottom, and then it quickly ran down stream, then up, over the shoal I was fishing behind and into the next pool up stream taking lots of line with it. Looking down, I saw that I was almost into my backing and headed after the fish. While fighting this brute, the tornado sirens went off scaring the you know what out of me as we were only 150 yds from the siren. I finally landed the fish, looking around the whole time making sure I was not going to get hit from behind by a tornado or something. Turned out to be a 20 inch, very fat, Brown Trout. Fumbling around, I got a not so great photo of the fish, complete with raindrops on the lens. With the water off the lense, I tried for a better picture but the camera battery died . . . . . I spent some time making sure the fish was revived after the long fight. I held him facing upstream in the current for several minutes. I released him when he tried to escape and seemed string enough to head out on his own. I watching him swim off and stop a ways away on the bottom, then he headed upstream to live another day.
Wayne's Fly Fishing Adventures 