Rainy Mountain

 Sylvia and I spent today up on Rainy Mountain for some chilling, picnicking, and fishing...of course. It was just a fabulous day with cloud cover and temperatures in the seventies for some comfortable trekking through the woods. We went primarily to scout the waters in preparation of our friend, Steve, making a trip this month for some New Mexico fishing adventure. I'm glad we decided to scout the mountain because we found a productive place that Steve has yet to experience during his past fishing trips.

We explored four different streams at various elevations through the mountain range, and enjoyed every location we tramped through. The weather was perfect for fishing...yup, you already know I brought a fly rod for the trip. I fished three of those streams we explored, and had the same dry fly floating the waters the entire day. There were some pretty tight places in view of canopy and long, grassy banks along the streams' banks. So, yeah, I even surprised myself that I didn't lose a fly throughout the day. That fly will be going back for more action next week.

The best part of the day was when a surprise hit the bottom of my net. It's been about three years since I've landed a Rio Grande Cutthroat in home waters, but that drought ended today. Dang, I was thrilled when a Leetle Feller of about eight inches showed me his spots and orange slash lying in the net. But when a nice thirteen inch RGC trout hit my fly and fought like his life depended on it, well, that made my day! Considering stream sizes up on Rainy Mountain, that was a nice size trout for most of the streams I fish there. And, considering I fought him on a Winston WT 6'6" 2wt fly rod, it was even sweeter. I'm still grinning ear to ear as I write this post.

Gear: Winston WT 6'6" 2wt fly rod; Bauer SST3 fly reel; Winston Energy WF2F fly line; Tan Elk Hair Caddis dry fly all day long.