Alright - so my plans have gone awry the past 30 days: extremely busy with work, a family trip back home to Utah (where a planned run on the Provo river never materialized), my new rod was mysteriously broken and....AND, I wound up bait fishing, not once....but TWICE. I feel so dirty inside.
Yeah, aside from visiting family and my son's birthday, July was a jerk in 2009.
Enter August. And the first free weekend in almost a month. Even better, Eva is finally finished with school, so now she's out of excuses as to why she can't come out and play. Also, I am in possession of a brand new rod, being that I know it will take a while for the good folks over at Temple Fork to get my other new rod repaired/replaced and sent back to me.
And lets not forget that college ball starts this month as well. Someone pinch me, because I must be dreaming - Woohooooo!
So what to do? How about hitting the Taylor River? Brilliant! Ok...so we're going to hit the Taylor and the fly of choice is a Mysis - which is a pattern that I have never tied, or ever fished in my entire 9 years here in Colorado. That's right: I HAVE NEVER FISHED A MYSIS PATTERN ON THE PAN, THE BLUE OR THE TAYLOR.
There, I said it. Ah, the shame.
So, why not? Because I'm a masochistic version of Lenny, that's why.
Yeah, aside from visiting family and my son's birthday, July was a jerk in 2009.
Enter August. And the first free weekend in almost a month. Even better, Eva is finally finished with school, so now she's out of excuses as to why she can't come out and play. Also, I am in possession of a brand new rod, being that I know it will take a while for the good folks over at Temple Fork to get my other new rod repaired/replaced and sent back to me.
And lets not forget that college ball starts this month as well. Someone pinch me, because I must be dreaming - Woohooooo!
So what to do? How about hitting the Taylor River? Brilliant! Ok...so we're going to hit the Taylor and the fly of choice is a Mysis - which is a pattern that I have never tied, or ever fished in my entire 9 years here in Colorado. That's right: I HAVE NEVER FISHED A MYSIS PATTERN ON THE PAN, THE BLUE OR THE TAYLOR.
There, I said it. Ah, the shame.
So, why not? Because I'm a masochistic version of Lenny, that's why.
I've always preferred a challenge, and throwing a Mysis pattern just seemed...like cheating to me. Right or wrong, to me it would be like playing poker against those dogs in that hideous (but disturbingly popular) painting. Seriously, how good could they possibly be? They're dogs, and to make matters worse, they don't even have opposable thumbs, so they can't even hold the damn cards to begin with.
But then I started rationalizing, "...the really big fish on those rivers got big by eating Mysis shrimp..." Hmmmm....and with that thought, my moral compass went south in a big hurry.
So, having poured over page after page of information on these little buggers, I came up with my very own, uber-ultra-secret Mysis Pattern (like every other fly tier out there) that I have ceremoniously dubbed...the Mysis Pattern. A vulgar display of creative genius, if I do say so myself.
But then I started rationalizing, "...the really big fish on those rivers got big by eating Mysis shrimp..." Hmmmm....and with that thought, my moral compass went south in a big hurry.
So, having poured over page after page of information on these little buggers, I came up with my very own, uber-ultra-secret Mysis Pattern (like every other fly tier out there) that I have ceremoniously dubbed...the Mysis Pattern. A vulgar display of creative genius, if I do say so myself.
Being that I'm a virgin Mysis tier/fisher, this is either going to be a smashing success, or a ferocious kick in the testes. I'll give these patterns a few turns in the seams and see if they can produce, and if things don't look promising, I'll switch to the usual rogue's gallery of flies.
The plan this time is to hit some familiar runs at first light, followed by some vigorous walking and stalking the rest of the day - and with almost a month between fishing trips, I'm nursing a major urge to roll some hogs and my teats are getting a tad bit sore - so it's time to wean this baby, catch me some fish, and start acting like a man again.
And someone please tell those dogs that I'm gunning for them next.
4 comments:
sweet when you going?
Well, hey there anonymous he/she person! It's this weekend (the 8th). Feel free to join the fray - not that I would know it was you...but you're still welcome to swing on in and beat the waters with us.
That's hilarious! I just got to reading this and I'm ironically thinking back ... did you even tie that mysis pattern on all day?
Maybe you tried it out in the wee hours of the morning before I showed up!
As to the cheating comment ... give it a try on the Pan and you won't feel like it's cheating. There are times when they take it like candy, but for the most part, they scrutinize the pattern and the drift as well as they would a #28 midge.
Jeff - awesome time, even if the river was fishing a little slow and my drifts were out of whack (strangest thing I've ever seen.....).
That fished you hooked was MASSIVE. I got the video to prove it, too. Need to get it all written up and posted....
Mysis....yeah, I tried them once just after sunrise and the fish didn't even bat an eye at them. Like you were saying, though, it may not be the pattern so much as the timing...so I'm holding out hope that they'll still produce. In the meantime, I will tweak it some more, and maybe go a tad smaller on the size - like 20 or 22. If I can get scuds that produce...I can get a shrimp to pull in hits as well...
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