New Water

Yesterday I took a drive to a river I've never seen, let alone fished before.  It feeds into a lake and I was hoping I might find some of the resident Rainbows from the lake up in the river prior to them spawning.  As I wasn't even sure if I could legally access the river, let alone if there would be any fish in it, it was a bit of a crapshoot. 

It was sunny with no big wind, which has been a real rarity this spring.  I was able to find some access and liked the looks of the river. 

Visibility in the water was 12" or so and it was flowing a pretty good clip.  I think I can safely assume it was running high and off color as we are starting to see some evidence of runoff.  I started fishing with great optimism that perhaps I could find some big migratory fish out of the lake.  After an hour and a half of fishing I had tried perhaps 10 different combinations of flies and had yet to touch a fish.  I had cell coverage and had brought my phone with me as there was a possibility of me needing to be available for a "business" call.  The phone rang and I couldn't get my Bluetooth on in time to answer it.  I made the call back as this was in fact the call I thought might come. 

As we are discussing the situation I see my indicator slow a bit.  I set and say, is this a log?  Something heavy was on but it wasn't immediately apparent if it was a fish or a stick.  As I lifted up the fish showed itself.  It was a big beautiful Rainbow.  Meanwhile I'm still on the call as I fight the fish...makes me thankful for my Bluetooth.  I'd like to say it fought like I stole something from it, but that would be a lie.  The fish was heavy and I had to make a dash downstream 30 or 40 yards to finally land it but for the size of the fish it didn't put up a good fight.  I wouldn't say it felt like a wet towel but I was able to land it on a 3 wt in what I would guess was 3 minutes.  As is usually the case when you hook a big fish, I had left my net in the van and there was nowhere to beach the fish as the river is running bank to bank.  I tried grabbing it but it was too big to get my hand around it.  I finally managed to kind of scoop it up onto the bank. 

Through all of this I'm still on the phone.  My buddy on the line wants me to get a picture of it, as do I.  I also want to measure it as it is a large fish.  If I had my net all of this would be much easier as I could hold it in the net in the water allowing it to breath and recuperate while I get my tape measure and camera out.  Instead I start cupping water out of the river with my hands and throwing it on the fish as it is flopping around in the mud.  I get my tape out and measure it, 22" of lake resident Rainbow.  I would have liked to have measured the girth as it was incredibly thick.  However, I don't like killing fish unless I'm going to eat them and I couldn't risk keeping it out of the water any longer than absolutely necessary.  I laid my rod next to the fish and tried to snap a picture.  It flopped around and ultimately I got one lousy photo of it.  The photo doesn't do it justice as this fish was likely around 5lbs. 

I put in another hour an half or so and got one more take.  It ended up being a 17" Rainbow.  I probably should have stayed and fished some more.  I had reached the private property boundary and with the river flowing so full I really didn't feel like staying in the water the rest of the day to avoid trespassing. 

All in all I enjoyed this new piece of water and will likely fish it again before runoff is in full force.  My biggest takeaway was how different lake fish are from resident river fish.  The 22" Rainbow up out of the lake fought about like an 18" resident river fish.  That isn't a complaint as it's still fun to land a 5lb fish, just an interesting observation.