New Year's Day Skunking

New Year's Day is reserved for a fishing trip to get the first fish of the year under the belt. You never go out thinking you're going to get skunked; but that's what happened to me today. I got up at 5.30, was at the river by 7.30, rigging and ready to go. Decided on the little #4 XP with its Sage/Loop companion reel. After the #10 and #11 for kingis last week its felt like nothing in hand.

The river was in great nick, maybe the best I've seen it in terms of water depth, clarity and lack of algal bloom. But the long grass was pushed down bank side and the lack of fish in the first holding pool confirmed that the wee stream had been fished recently; maybe even a day earlier. With cloud overhead the spotting would be difficult but I knew it would burn off.

Nothing came to the dry/nymph combo up to the spot where I started looking for a brownie that so often holds... he saw me first and literally hit the burners - most un-brown like, but confirming that there had been some pressure recently. Ok, so I crawled upstream at snail's pace, carefully casting into every holding spot... nothing at home. Nothing was even spooking off. Within a couple of hours I'd fished to the car having only seen the one fish, most unusual for this water.

At the car I sat down and had a quick drink and thought about a location change. Within 20 minutes I could be on at least 3 other waters.. but no, I'd come to fish here so fish on I would. Again the holding pools were mainly bare except for the final large pool where as I stalked through the long grass up I finally found a nice rainbow on station. I ducked down to prepare but when I looked again he'd gone, a glance down stream revealed that not only he, but also a rather large brown had taken shelter in the very deepest part of the pool. S-P-O-O-K-Y.

The brown moved under a rock and literally lay on his side with fins down, typical skulking "you can't see me" behaviour when spooked. I took o photo of him in his hidey hole; but without a polarising filter got a nice shot of some rocks and a log!

That's a fish

I quickly made my way up the creek to where its major tributary enters, and decided that after all these years of never exploring it today would be the day. Some quite pretty water was found, but not much in the way of holding pools.

Hopefully getting skunked is a good thing - sort of like using your bad karma quotient up early and getting it out of the way.

Happy New Year everyone.