Last week was spring
break and Dry Run Creek was rocking. There were loads of people from all over
the United States that had traveled here to have their children fish there. At
times, the parking lot would be full. One thing is evident; Dry Run Creek is
the worst kept secret in the lower forty eight. In the midst of this madness,
my wife, Lori, and I worked most of the week. I guided three days and she
guided two. Luckily for me, we got to guide together on Thursday. In
addition, my brother in law, Larry Allen, was in town hoping to fish and he
ended up helping us with several kids during the time.
You would think that
with that many people fishing on the creek that it would get too crowded and
there would be nowhere to fish. What we found was that the people would cluster
at certain spots and there was plenty of water to fish. Over the course of the
week, we caught about as many fish as we usually do and several of them were
true trophies. On Tuesday, I had a spectacular day and caught plenty of fish.
One of the fish was a bit different from the rest.
My client (a fourteen
year old first timer) had been fishing a deep hole and had pretty much caught
anything that was in there. We decided to walk the creek and look for a bigger
trout. We caught a few fish and then saw a really large rainbow sipping insects
out of the film. It was rhythmically rising in some slack water near a riffle.
The water was quite shallow and we could easily see the fish.
I couldn’t see any
insects but figured that it was keying in on midge emergers. I figured that if
the trout was feeding on the top maybe I could interest it in something big.
Think double bacon cheese burger. I decided to try a hopper. I know that it is not
hopper season but I figured that the rainbow didn’t know that. My favorite
hopper pattern is the western pink lady. I mashed down the barb and tied one
on. I had my young client cast a couple of feet upstream of the trout. It was a
perfect cast and a perfect drift. The trout followed it for a few inches and
then returned to its lie, our first refusal. We gave it a couple more casts but
the big rainbow was not interested.
My client’s father was
standing next to me. He said”what are you going to do now?” I said ‘I’ll keep
trying flies until we catch him or move him.” I thought about my next choice
for a minute and then decided on a size eight Dave’s hopper. It is one of Dave
Whitlock’s most effective flies and a dead on imitation of a grasshopper. I pinched
down the barb, tied it on and applied a liberal portion of fly floatant.
My client deftly cast
the fly upstream of the fish and let it move downstream in a perfect drag free
drift. As it passed over the big rainbow, the fish rose in the water column and
inhaled the fly. My client was mesmerized by the take and stood there looking
at the trout as it went down toward the bottom. I yelled out “set the hook!” He
quickly lifted the rod. The trout felt the sting of the hook and took off
downstream. With a big size eight streamer hook, 4X fluorocarbon (seven pound
test) and a properly set disc drag on a fly reel, it could not go far. I netted
the trout, a brightly colored fat twenty five inch male rainbow. We swapped
high fives and then took the photographs. It was the highlight of a spectacular
week.
We found than an
occasional double bacon cheeseburger is good for fly fishing.
John Berry is a fly
fishing guide for Blue Ribbon Guides in Cotter, Arkansas and has fished our
local streams for over thirty years.
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