Oh The Irony

After two weeks of occasionally trying to fish, and never catching a damned thing, on Sunday (Nov 13) I decided it Was Time. I went to the tackle shop and got what I needed to go tautog (blackfish) fishing.

Or so I thought.

I got one of these:

Clipped on one of these to the snap:

 

Killed one of these and hung each side to each of the hooks:

And I proceeded to row from rocky reef to rocky reef, anchoring and fishing each spot.

Until I lost my terminal tackle with 7 crabs still in my bucket.

Not a bite. But I know why. I was doing it wrong. When I got home I saw that Rich at FishAholic Fishing on youtube had gone blackfishing and done much better. Watching him I see what I need to do!

 

But now for the irony. I went bottom fishing and couldn't catch anything.
So today the rain cleared and I was restless at 3:30 and so I snuck out to the stream. One mile from home. I cast a salmon pattern fly for about 5 minutes, but again, I need to use my right arm because of my sore left elbow, and besides, how do fish eat eggs? I decided to simply cast it out to a slow area downstream and leave it to sink to the bottom. Then I switched to the spinning rod with my right hand. With a small rapala dace pattern I hooked into a lively fish in no time. But I forgot my net and once again lost it at my feet--but it was so busy I did not identify whether it was a bass or a trout. It was definitely not perch. Too lively.

Then I got a tangle, dealt with it and went back to it. After about 15 more minutes I was untangling the mother of all tangles with the spool off and the drag nut off and the sun down, and suddenly the fly rod, which I'd left at my feet on a big rock, started jumping. So I quickly put the spinning rig down and picked up the fly rod, Fish ON!

I played the fish to the bank and slid it safely up the mud. I could see it was a trout. At this point I was getting very excited. Mid-autumn, sea run brown trout stream, silvery looking hard fighting trout, taking a salmon egg pattern....was it a salter?

No.

It was a rainbow!  Still--good!  Gut hooked. I guess it was hungry. There was only a tiny bit of digested insect in the bottom of the stomach. After getting it home I looked it up: the river was stocked a week ago. OK that explains it.

The irony though is not lost on me. I go fly fishing for trout and manage to catch a fish on the bottom! Ha!