I headed out yesterday for a day of fishing and messing around with my 9 year old son. I was not expecting the fishing to be great, but we were planning on having fun none the less.
The fishing was slow, very slow. We did bring a few to the net in the morning stripping small streamers. At this point in the trip, what my son enjoyed the most was watching the Brown Trout Spawning. Taking a break from fishing, we spent much time walking the river banks (without rod in hand) watching the browns do their thing. This gave me an opportunity to answer a few of the many fish spawning questions he had.
As to keep away from the mating browns, we moved to another deep pool in the river, but again the fishing was slow. We caught a couple more on top, but cold air and the wind was getting the better of my son. From where we stood, we could see some “BIG” browns swimming in the deep pool. They would come close to the top of the water column every once in a while, but never actually surfaced.
My son made the recommendation to throw a mouse pattern… How could I deny him his request. He selected the mouse pattern from my streamer box, and I tied it on. Up until this point, we were fishing dries and a dropper. (5 wt rod and
dry fly leader). I tied on the mouse and made the first cast. Bam, a large brown exploded on the mouse pattern which was now only about 10 feet from us. I missed the strike but this sure got our blood pumping.
We ran back to the truck, put away the 5 wt rods and grabbed my 7 wt rod with a heavy top water
“Big Bug” leader. This set-up made throwing big, wet, heavy mice patterns much easier. Also, I had 2x tippet to help turn such a heavy fly. A few casts later, another large brown smacked my mouse pattern. Now keep in mind this was about 3:00 in the afternoon with slight cloud cover. I never thought we would get so much attention using mice. Now this was fun. We missed a lot of takes, but we also connected with a few. I only had one heavy rod with me, so we took turns. A turn consisted of getting a strike or making 5 casts and retrieves. Needless to say, I was very impressed that my son could deliver a mouse pattern so perfectly to these fish. Being that we were fishing from the same general pool, this was great fishing. Now the same kid that was previously cold and chilled by the wind did not want to leave. My job as a fishing dad was complete…
