The Trip Home (3/3)

On Thursday, we broke down the camp and loaded everything into our trucks. I wish we had more time to spend there fishing, but life is busy these days and other commitments required us to depart to our respective homes. Steve had a long haul home and made plans for stop overs and some fishing. I haven't heard from him since we left camp, but I hope he got into some hefty trout on those streams he wanted to wade into.

After Robert and I left camp, we stopped at the closest town to top off our gas tanks. We were standing at the pumps talking about what a great fishing trip we just enjoyed, when we started going through the list of trout streams we could hit on our trip home (for a couple of hours of fly fishing). Yep, we decided on one and stopped there for a couple of hours to play with trout.

The water flow on the stream was perfect, and the hatches were fabulous. Oh man, I lucked out and netted my personal record brown trout using a 3wt fly rod...he was a beauty that had a thick girth and bright, buttery colors in the 16 inch plus class, maybe 17 inches. Any fly fisher would want to find this one in their landing net. He put up a good fight and took me downstream a ways before I coaxed him into my net. A great day!

Gear: Winston IM6 7'6" 3wt fly rod; Bauer SST3 reel. Fly: Olive Parachute Hopper #14.

As I'm sitting here typing this post and reliving this week's great adventure, I'm already thinking about where I want go next. After all, I still need a couple of species to claim my New Mexico slam...