FIRST TIMERS BY JOHN BERRY

This Monday I guided a couple, Kevin and Mary, from Kansas. They were experienced outdoors people but had never fly fished. I began the day with a short casting lesson. They took to it quickly and a few minutes later I launched my White River Jon boat and we began fishing. 

It was a cool start that morning, with a beginning temperature of sixty nine degrees, but a promise, of a ninety one degree high temperature. There was a heavy fog, on the river, and there were few clouds against a blue sky. The Corps of Engineers was running about 6,000 cubic feet per second or a bit less than two full generators. 

I had rigged them slightly differently. Mary got a beadhead pheasant tail nymph below a cerise San Juan worm with an AAA split shot and a strike indicator set at about eight feet from the bottom fly to the strike indicator. I gave Kevin the same rig except that he got a hot fluorescent pink worm. 

We had only drifted a few hundred yards, when Mary hit her first trout. It put on quite a struggle. When I finally got a good look at it, I quickly realized that it was a big brown. I carefully coached Mary, on how to land the trophy trout. In a few minutes, the brown was in the net. I was amazed. It was a stout twenty four inch hook jawed male. This was the best first trout that I had ever witnessed. Usually, when a new angler hooks something like this early, on the first day, they try to rush the fight and horse the fish in resulting in a lost fish. Mary however took her time and deftly landed it. We took a few photos and lovingly released it. 

She went, on a tear, catching one trout after another. Meanwhile Kevin was fishless, while Mary had landed seven trout. He was casting well and was definitely getting some good drifts. I thought that there had to be some difference, in their presentation. I figured out that they were using different lead flies. Kevin was using a hot fluorescent pink San Juan worm while Mary was fishing, with a cerise San Juan worm. Would having the two anglers fish slightly different shades, of pink, really make a difference? I decided to find out. I switched Kevin over to a cerise San Juan worm with a beadhead pheasant tail nymph dropper so that he was rigged exactly like Mary. 

Half way through the next drift Kevin hit a good trout. This was just the beginning. He went on a tear catching trout after trout. Mary was not idle. She continued her success and even landed a fat twenty inch rainbow. However by the end of the day Kevin had probably landed as many trout as Mary had. We finished the day with about forty trout. It had been a great first day! 

Sometimes the slightest change can make a difference.