Thread: Saturday morning creek trip

It’s the weekend, and after driving around late Saturday looking for a place to fish that wasn’t crowded I decided to check out the creek at the old Mill first .
I was disappointed to see the water was still up , stained and flowing faster than I’d like .
I decided, to give it try anyway.
I had two Tenkara rods with me , my 7-8’ Zoom Wild Water , and my Red Fox twelve footer .
I started off with the Wild Water set at 8’ with an 8’ leader line and about six feet of tippet .
With my arms reach my max distance was about 23’ .
Fishing with a spider I quickly realized I need something with a little weight to get my fly down a little in that current.
I tied on a size 12 beadhead woolybooger .
I would cast slightly up current and and would let it swing directly downstream from me , then twitch it back to me .
On about my tenth cast , I felt a tick and set the hook into a nice redbreast . It , with the current had my little rod bent to its max . I had to play it to get it close enough to grab the line and land it .
Well, that made my trip .
I worked the area there and up to the dam without another bite .
Then I switched over to the 12 footer to try to expand my fly’s exposure.
After several casts , I got another hit almost in the same spot that turned out to be another nice redbreast, but it came unhooked before I could get it in .
That was it for action today .
It made me realize just how limited I was making myself with the Tenkara rods .
Even with the long one , my casts were less than halfway across the creek.
I was wishing I’d taken one of my 6’6” 3wt flyrods, so I could have covered the whole creek .
Can’t help but to think I left fish there that I could have caught with a conventional flyrod .
I enjoy Tenkara , and will continue to fish with them , but I think I’ll be throwing a regular flyrod in the Rav4 next trip .

And the learning curve continues. Sound like a fun trip to me. I also had a redbreast today that seemed to have a little extra horsepower. They often make my trip complete.