What a nice day today, the skies were clear all day and the day
couldn’t have been more beautiful. It
was crisp but beautiful, you know those days, where you look outside and say to
yourself, it’s so nice I will put something light on and then you walk outside. You only get as far as the first step, so you
can pivot, use the door handle or knob to turn back inside to grab something a
little warmer. This happened to me today, but it was ok because I went fly fishing. The assistant vice principal at the main
school where I teach is quite an avid fly fisherman and promised to take me fly
fishing with him. So on our random
weekday off, he took me to a private reservoir to fish, leaving at promptly
7am. I was prepared as I could have been
for a day of fishing a wildly crowded fly fishing-only reservoir; it seemed to
go against everything I think of about fly fishing. Normally, I think of a fishing buddy, maybe
one other and the river or lake, that’s it.
What do you think of?
We arrived just after 8:30am to see a group of five people
already fishing on the banks of the reservoir. It was an awesome sight seeing a
few people flinging line while the thick haze of fog lifted off of the
reservoirs surface. You will have to
imagine this sight, as I was not camera ready when driving into the reservoir
area. This reservoir is called Gouzon,
named after the town it sits right outside of.
After seeing the pamphlet I got, I thought the fishing would be a wild
experience, just look at the different types of fish that are in there:
Starting our day of fishing, my new friend Emmanuel left me to
learn to “attaque ces poissons a la nymphe a vue” which literally means “attack
these fish with a nymph you can see.” It
actually means: go for it, throw your nymph and see if you can get one.
Have you ever been caught in a situation where you either can’t
understand the language being spoken or you can’t understand how people arrived
at the argument they’re having? That was
me, about 25 minutes into “attacking” the fish I could see cruising the surface
with my visible nymph, I stopped fishing to sit on the bank for a bit. I was just sitting there, jaw dropped in the
sheer beauty of the sun coming over the hill and my inability to fish this new
technique. I would cast my size 18 nymph,
(about ½ a centimeter long) about a meter in front of a cruising fish then losing
about 2 seconds after it landed in the water.
I was just hoping that the fish I was tracking would turn a bit towards
it, but I was having no luck. Since the
water doesn’t move, I was getting fairly bored even after attaching a clear
thingamabobber about a meter up my leader from the fly so I could spot it move. I tried this technique for about one more hour
then switched to what I know best in lakes, streamers. After one hour and
countless changing of my fly, I couldn’t even find a bump and was starting to
feel my stomach grumble. I thought it
would be good to take a picture then find my friend fishing elsewhere.
Of course he had caught 2 fish while we were fishing apart and I
told him that I should have been with him, so that he could teach me. He told me that we should eat lunch and stick
together after, so we ate a nice lunch in the sunshine, just chatting about our
next adventure around the reservoir. We walked around and switched flies,
tailing the aquabonitas or Golden trout, as you can imagine they are the
easiest to spot and usually led us to cruising rainbows or blue back cutthroat.
He finally cast a whole 10 feet, and
lifted his fly rod to entice a cruising rainbow that crushed his size 18
pheasant tail. It was the most bizarre
fly fishing experience I have had next to being 6 in a fish farm and putting
the bait in front of the fish’s noses.
He had the fish on for all of 5 seconds then lost it. We tried for about 20 more minutes and
climbed out of the branches where we were roll casting. We started toward a dock where Emmanuel said
there were lots of fish. It was about
4pm when the action finally picked up, for me at least. I caught my first fish in France, a whole 3
inches long Roach fish, cute name.
Emmanuel said “battle time” with a laugh then told me to fight it
towards middle of the dock, as I moved from beach on the side of the dock, I
climbed on to the dock and fought the monster (dragged it a bit) towards the
middle of the dock. Bam, a monster
rainbow came out from under the dock and crushed it. I know what you’re thinking; awesome way to
catch a fish, but this rainbow was lucky and took everything but the fly. This forever makes me love fly fishing and
not lure fishing. What a thrill. It took not two minutes for me to tie on a
pattern that I bought for Pike that resembled the cute Roach fish and I was
chucking my streamer to the end of the dock and retrieving in quick strips
along the dockside. For ten minutes, I
had two fish come out to look at it and a big one chase then stop. It’s even more frustrating when you can see
these fish, but I still love it, the thrill of the chase is unbeatable. Then I looked to my right and about 15 feet
off the dock, four feet from shore and five feet away from me this fish is just
hanging out as if to say, “Hey Moron, I am over here!” So I picked my line up, walked backwards
slowly about ten feet. With my 12 foot leader, I chucked only the leader and
fly behind this fish. I scooted my fly
about six inches to the right of this beautiful specimen and when it was
visible to the fish, boom she gave chase, I stripped once more and BAM crushed
it.
What a nice Brook trout!
Some have told me they
think it is a Dolly Varden, what is your professional opinion?
This is what fly fishing is about for me, patience, enjoyment of natural
surroundings and no feeling that catching a fish is necessary for a good day. When all of that sets in I can focus on the
surroundings and the fish are that cherry on top.
Later around 6 we took off to the other side of the reservoir to
a shallow beach like area, where Emmanuel said the big rainbows go to feast on
the small Roaches. There, my first cast
was struck as soon as my streamer hit the water. Plop, strip, BAM! Big rainbow flying out of the water, then
dead weight… I thought, dang this fish
is smart and wrapped me up around something.
As I lifted I found a rope coming out of the water, apparently the fish
wrapped around the rope, the hook popped out and slipped right into the rope. I found another fly attached in the rope, so
I called it a win with an additional fly now in the box. It was getting dark, so in a feverish attempt
to catch one last fish and of course cast as far as I could, I flung my line
along the, shallow foot deep shoreline at a cruising shadow. Four strips, a flash and it was off to the
races.
Keep em wet!
Day done and some fish caught. I can’t ask for anything
better. Merci Emmanuel for taking me
fishing, it was awesome! Hopefully we
will go again.
Riding horses is next on the agenda, we will see about that.
