Thank you all, gentlemen and fellow Troutnuts (Bassnuts?). This is thrilling fishing, especially since you can't tell the size of the fish from the rise. So many of them just sip it, almost no sound, but every once in a while one will roll good and then you have an idea of your quarry. These fish are brutes!! Set the hook and then hang on, it's gonna take you a while...feels like a cinder block with fins, weight you almost can't move and then comes the plunging dive or the aerial spectacular! Because I was drifting and not anchored, this fish actually did pull my kayak around at least a little. (I've contemplated kayak fishing for salmon in the fall off the mouth of the river, just to see if I can really get a ride!)
Best of all, it's match-the-hatch dry fly fishing. This place sees multiple hatches and it's the best time to find and entice the smallies, versus fishing blind with a streamer which I have had occasional luck on, but nothing like this! If the weather cooperates, I should be back out there in a couple of nights.
I did two other fishing trips later in the week, too. Good old [REDACTED] pond threw me a slew of hungry brookies, only one of which was under 8" and the biggest was 11". Tore my grasshopper imitations apart, literally! Then a night on the rifle was so-so, too humid for waders so I felt like I was in a sweat lodge and sun straight in my eyes for the first half hour! No major hatches either, little guys feeding, caught four including a 10" rainbow. Three fishing trips in one week, DANG! First time this year!
"Back in the saddle, again..."
Jonathon
No matter how big the one you just caught is, there's always a bigger one out there somewhere...