I have been busy lately guiding a variety of clients. My wife, Lori, has been busy also due to the interest generated by the article naming her one of the top ten guides that appeared in Garden and Gun Magazine this spring. We were both working last Saturday. I had a boat trip on the White River and Lori took a youngster to Dry Run Creek for Blue Ribbon Fly Shop.
Lori and I both successful days on stream catching plenty of fish. However, when Lori was netting a large trout she slipped and instinctively put out her hand to break her fall. In doing so, she managed to sprain her thumb. It was quite painful and she ended up wearing a brace to stabilize her thumb.
The problem was that she was scheduled to guide her client’s cousin the next day and due to her injury she was unable to net fish particularly large ones. On Dry Run Creek that is a problem. Luckily I had the day off and volunteered to accompany her and net fish. She was relieved.
We met our client along with his mother, Lily, and grandmother, Rhea, at the shop at 8:00 AM. Both are avid photographers and wanted to record the event. Cole is fifteen years old and bigger than me. He wears a size twelve shoe (I wear an eight) and looks like a football player. He had fished the White River the day before and landed twenty two trout. If I had been a warden, I would have checked his ID. He had the look of an angler about him.
He was a competent caster and had no trouble setting the hook. Over the day, he never tangled his line and only lost one fly (it is in a fish). He is possibly the best client that I have ever had on Dry Run Creek.
The first fish he hooked was a twenty four inch rainbow with a substantial girth. He easily brought it in. The ladies photographed it and I released it. This event was to be repeated several times that day. Every time we netted a big one (over twenty four inches), Cole and I would wade over to where Lily and Rhea were standing. We kept the fish in the net until they had their cameras set up and then carefully lifted the fish from the net so that they could photograph it. They also took photos on their smart phones so they could email the photos. After that, I would return the fish to the water and carefully revive them.
By the time we stopped for lunch, he had landed five huge trout and numerous smaller fish (we lost count early in the process). The largest was twenty seven inches long and probably went over twelve pounds. All were rainbows. I was interested in catching some different species. We set our goal for the afternoon to land a big brown. We returned to the stream and began fishing in earnest.
We caught another couple of huge rainbows and then we hooked a big brown. I got a good look at him and he was a big male that was definitely bigger than anything we had landed. I would estimate that he went over fifteen pounds. He was definitely a hand full. He was hugging the bottom and moving around at ease. I had 4X tippet and the drag on the reel was set pretty heavy. I was in the water with my big net and carefully following him hoping for a chance to net him. My heart skipped a beat when I saw him swim into a stack or rocks near the undercut bank. The indicator stopped moving. I carefully waded over to it and found the leader wrapped around a root wad. The brown was gone. They don’t get that big by being stupid!
We landed several other trout including another trophy rainbow but no other browns. We ended the day on a pleasant note with a ten pounder. It had been a stellar day with more big fish than I had ever seen one angler land. Lori estimated over a hundred pounds of trout landed. I do not doubt it.
Dry Run Creek was very good to us. Lori would not have been able to land those huge trout with her injury. I am glad that I was there to help!
John Berry is a fly fishing guide in Cotter, Arkansas and has fished our local streams for over thirty years.
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