Practice Gets the Fish
Finding a nice fish in the middle of Wisconsin’s dry, hot summer is never easy, but my friend, John Beth, always manages to do just that. A few days ago, he visited a couple of spring creeks in the SW corner of Wisconsin. The weeds were high on the banks, and the water was low and gin clear, and choked with weeds.
The day dawned foggy, but that quickly disappeared, leaving a hot, dry day. By 3 pm, John had only taken one nice rainbow on a small beetle. Then he found a long deep pool with grass overhanging the banks. The tips arched out and brushed the water surface out at least a foot and a half from shore. It looked good, but nothing showed. John thought he heard the slight plop of a rise; then a slow set of ripples rolled out from under the overhanging grass. He watched for several more minutes before he saw the rise, back behind the tips of the overhanging grasses.
John headed downstream, not to get a better casting angle, but to practice the right cast. After a bit of fussing, he was able to skip a hopper through the delicate grass tips, and using a long tippet, was able get a couple of seconds of dead drift.
Back in position to cast to the rising fish, John skipped the hopper through the veil of grass tips like skipping a flat stone on a lake. The hopper only drifted about 6 inches before it disappeared in a gentle “gulp.”
After several long minutes he worked the big fish to the narrower, faster end of the pool and slid his net under a truly gorgeous 22 inch female rainbow. A quick photo, and he watched her swim strongly away.
The moral of the story: Practice, done right, does indeed, make perfect.
A very lovely hopper eater that required a bit of practice to take.