March Madness Begins...

The two white creatures on the water are white pelicans.

 

Yes, I skipped the opening of trout season at Missouri's trout parks.  Tried that once and decided that was enough.  So when today looked like it would be fairly nice and with the water off, I headed to Taneycomo. The temperature was not too bad, but the wind was gusting pretty good and made casting a little difficult.  I've been tying a lot of classic wet flies and thought I'd try one or two of those.  But I still tied on a soft hackle as a dropper.  In what was probably a little less than two hours more than a handful of trout were brought to hand, or net, and released. All but two were caught on a soft hackle!

One of the pelicans

The second trout I landed was probably the heaviest, a nice fat rainbow of about 15 inches; the last one was probably just as lengthy, maybe a little longer, but no girth at all.  It was colored nicely and fought okay, but "skinny as a rail". March madness? As I was putting my net away after landing that second fish, I somehow managed to undo the net from my vest.  While playing in the water successfully retrieving the net, my rod bent.  Yep, I had left the flies drift down stream as I was playing with the net. The result was another nice, 14-15 inch rainbow.  These were the only two fish caught on the wet fly and not the soft hackle.  They were the largest fish caught by me today.  Two white pelicans were swimming on the lake for awhile.  It was a pretty sight when they decided to leave.  They were so white against the drab background of the leafless trees.

This is a busy month, five of us are planning a two day trip this weekend.  We'll be fishing the upper end of the North Fork of the White Saturday and then Simms Valley Lake from our kayaks on Sunday.  There are supposed to be chain pickerel in the lake and that is what we will be going after. The following week we begin our fishing class at the boys' ranch and then I head to Mountain Home, Arkansas for the sowbug round-up. Thankfully, the MSU class doesn't start until the first week of April this year. Hope to have some more stories for next week.


Have to add a few fish pictures!