that same spoon fly. brown. windy as heck, tracked him for about 30 minutes. 2 feet of water.
3 shots, wasn’t happy tailing, just a swirl here or there.
the one that did it was a long cast thrown upwind, I put the fly down past where the swirl was to play the lay of the flyline. It was a long cast, the line laid down in the shape of a ‘c’ in a big power fade to play the break. 2 strips and the fly went from around behind him to right in front of the last swirl spot (that’s the Chatooga school coming into play right there).
He flattens it and I dug in on him, big strip set.
It was like a bowshot when I started giving him line, straight acros the flat. He cleared the flyline in under 10 seconds and I was glad that I had a mile of pretty good braid behind it because he took it way down (I have my 9wt backed with old power pro from whenever I respool a spinning reel).
The large arbor Battenkill holds a lot and I needed it. One long long run and I got him turned and worked him back on in. A few more little power runs and I’m back to the flyline and then I bring him the rest of the way in.
An amazing fish, shoulders like a linebacker and gold. Tagged, so I’ll get his life story when I get the numbers of to DNR. I love that.
A little reviving and he was off strong. Look up once the world comes back into my attention and there’s a rainbow, storms over.
He measured out around 33
I’m Back Baby!
. The rod is great, I had the older model an 8/9 but fished that into the ground and they sent me this one as a replacement
