Hope

Lilium pardalinum aka  California Tiger Lily

Sometimes hope can come in many forms.  There are also times when hope can get shattered into oblivion, like a supernova sending celestial fragments into the unknown.  For me, I find hope when I see a brown trout at least 18" in size waiting to rise for a well placed dry fly.  I will never give up hope for this moment to connect with such a fine beast in my local water.   Lately, I've been fascinated with stalking large socal trout.  My typical approach is to fish every pocket, seam, shallow run, pool, etc... I've learned to walk away from this tactic and began to stand back and observe.  One would be amazed when time is taken to just slow down and watch. 

I scouted one of my local socal streams last week and found several trout, most likely browns in the 16-18" class.  Maybe even pushing 20... I was blown away.  I barely even wet my line that day as stalking the fish had become more fun than blind casting and catching average fish on the whim.  I explored some tributaries, however since I was alone this became a bit sketchy the deeper I explored.  

Once I told Charles of the news of my findings, he was all over it.  Its good to have a friend just as crazy as I am to find these fish.  We decided to head to the creek after I got off work.  Our approach was to skip all the pocket water and dissect the pool with the big browns.  We coded each sector of the pool with letters and I remained as the scout, while Charles went down to cast.  It proved difficult to shout through the cascade and the plan crumbled.  Within the first few casts, Charles over lined the giant and it bolted into the unknown.  These fish are old, wise and have the supernatural ability to evade anglers.  We hiked into a new section of water, in hope to find some nice big pools.

 The first fairly deep run revealed a nice trout in the 11-12 range gently sipping the surface film.  With no consistent hatch, these fish were probably slurping emergers.  The cast was long and awkward since I was up on a steep narrow ridge with no way down without spooking the fish.  The remainder of the creek was mediocre at best.  Water level was low and fish were small.  Charles managed a nice 11-12" rainbow in an overlooked pool on our way out. 

Despite the mediocre fishing, it was rewarding to cast my new 486 Z-Axis.  The rod felt like sports car in a small parking lot, it was just begging to shoot line into the next county.  It's too much rod for small socal creeks but its main purpose will be reserved for bigger waters of the sierra and beyond. Hopefully I will have the time and funding to break it in on the Kings River sometime soon.