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During the Summer I had three vacations X-)
Vacation 1#: California Sierra Backpacking trip with my brothers and nieces.
Vacation 2#: Music Camp at a ranch in Eastern Washington
Vacation 3#: Labor day retreat at the ranch mentioned above.
The ranch is rather interesting. The people there host retreats and camps all summer long at very low prices. For 80$ per family(no matter what size) you get a cabin to sleep in and three meals a day over the week end plus whatever is planned for the retreat/camp. There are lots of horses and donkeys (just because they like them, thats the only reason they would give for having them). And they have some goats and sheep (also cause they like them).
So how does this ranch stay in business? It has a fish farm, the ranch is right next to the columbia river. When they feed the fish, the fish in the river swim around and through the farm and eat whatever pelets slip through the farm netting. And so you see hundreds of fish every day ranging from two to ten plus pounds (rainbow trout of course). The people at the ranch allow the campers/retreaters to fish off of the farm docks for the non farm trout.
During my second stay at the ranch I decided to use my fly rod instead of my normal spinning outfit, just to make things more difficult for myself. It payed off :-)
I managed to get one of the most difficult fishing battles I have ever had. I was fishing between two of the farm docks, which means I was fishing through a space about a foot and a half wide. My rod was 9.5 feet long, and made for catching normal sized trout (8-16 inches long) and I was using a 4 lb test leader. I had dropped my line into the water and had been waiting for maybe thirty seconds when something big bit. I pulled my line and yanked at the same time, and then proceeded to fight the fish for around twenty seconds before it broke my leader.
I quickly re-rigged and put my line in the same spot. And once again, after thirty seconds or so, I hooked a fish, this was also a large one. Initially it only ran a little and pulled maybe fifteen inches of fly line out before I was able to haul the line back in. But then.....It realized it was hooked. It suddenly took off and pulled over ten feet of line off my real before I started hauling it back in again. The battle continued this way for quite a while.
I had limited fighting space. For footing I had about a three foot wide dock. For space to move my rod tip around, I had that 1.5 foot gap between the docks. This made things very awkward for a person with a 9.5 foot trout rod. So what I did was I moved as far from the gap as I could and held my rod butt behind my head with my right hand. I had my left hand further down the rod holding onto the line to act as a drag (remember it was a dragless fly rod) and had the tip of my rod in the water. This was the best I could do to keep the thing from breaking my rod in half.
All around me were a bunch of kids who were getting excited about the fight. And about fifty feet away from me past the end of the fish pens there were three boats of fishermen side by side, they had been catching fish in the 13-15 inch range all day long.
The fish finally tired itself out on one last huge run. During the final run my reel was spinning uncontrollably with the handle doing around seven or eight revaluations per second and making a very high pitched screaming sound (the people in the boats gave me some rather irritated/jealous looks at this point). After that final run I slowly brought the fish up to the gap one inch at a time. When I finally got it up to the suffice I suddenly realized there was no way I could handle a rod that long with a fish that big and net it at the same time. And I looked around me and the only people available to help were a bunch of boys and girls under the age of ten.
Right then and there I pointed to a little boy who looked slightly responsible (he was maybe eight or nine) and told him he was going to net the fish.
I told him to follow my instructions very carefully, he nodded in agreement. So first things first I told him to put it in the water but not near the fish yet, he did so. I then pulled the fish close enough to break the surface. Then I told the boy to put the net under the fish, which he did, and then I told him to pull up with the net, which he did perfectly.
I am not sure what I was more proud of at the moment. My ability to give instructions or the boys ability to follow them, but either way, it worked out. The net was long so the boy was having trouble pulling it up onto the dock after it got out of the water, so I had another little kid grab the net closer to the hoop and together they got it onto the dock.
Right as the net touched the dock my hook came out of the fishes mouth. We also found that the fish had made a hole in the net with its head. But in the end....it doesn't matter, I got it in. The hook I had been using was a treble hook and I was noticing it looked rather deformed, so I took a look. One of the prongs was still in good shape, but one of the others was bent almost strait out, and the third had been torn completely from its bonds to the other two and had some how ended pointing with its shaft bent up next to my line (think of a J with an inverted J on top and you have the general shape of my hook). I also found that all total the fish had pulled around forty feet of fly line off my real (I could tell cause it was on the dock all around me at the end).
The trout was not a monster, it was only six or seven pounds, not one of the biggest ones swimming around. But it is still the biggest trout I have caught and made for what was probably the most difficult fight I have ever fought against a fish, because of the conditions I was fishing in.
Any ways. That is all for now. I know its a long post but oh well. I hope someone enjoys it.
Vacation 1#: California Sierra Backpacking trip with my brothers and nieces.
Vacation 2#: Music Camp at a ranch in Eastern Washington
Vacation 3#: Labor day retreat at the ranch mentioned above.
The ranch is rather interesting. The people there host retreats and camps all summer long at very low prices. For 80$ per family(no matter what size) you get a cabin to sleep in and three meals a day over the week end plus whatever is planned for the retreat/camp. There are lots of horses and donkeys (just because they like them, thats the only reason they would give for having them). And they have some goats and sheep (also cause they like them).
So how does this ranch stay in business? It has a fish farm, the ranch is right next to the columbia river. When they feed the fish, the fish in the river swim around and through the farm and eat whatever pelets slip through the farm netting. And so you see hundreds of fish every day ranging from two to ten plus pounds (rainbow trout of course). The people at the ranch allow the campers/retreaters to fish off of the farm docks for the non farm trout.
During my second stay at the ranch I decided to use my fly rod instead of my normal spinning outfit, just to make things more difficult for myself. It payed off :-)
I managed to get one of the most difficult fishing battles I have ever had. I was fishing between two of the farm docks, which means I was fishing through a space about a foot and a half wide. My rod was 9.5 feet long, and made for catching normal sized trout (8-16 inches long) and I was using a 4 lb test leader. I had dropped my line into the water and had been waiting for maybe thirty seconds when something big bit. I pulled my line and yanked at the same time, and then proceeded to fight the fish for around twenty seconds before it broke my leader.
I quickly re-rigged and put my line in the same spot. And once again, after thirty seconds or so, I hooked a fish, this was also a large one. Initially it only ran a little and pulled maybe fifteen inches of fly line out before I was able to haul the line back in. But then.....It realized it was hooked. It suddenly took off and pulled over ten feet of line off my real before I started hauling it back in again. The battle continued this way for quite a while.
I had limited fighting space. For footing I had about a three foot wide dock. For space to move my rod tip around, I had that 1.5 foot gap between the docks. This made things very awkward for a person with a 9.5 foot trout rod. So what I did was I moved as far from the gap as I could and held my rod butt behind my head with my right hand. I had my left hand further down the rod holding onto the line to act as a drag (remember it was a dragless fly rod) and had the tip of my rod in the water. This was the best I could do to keep the thing from breaking my rod in half.
All around me were a bunch of kids who were getting excited about the fight. And about fifty feet away from me past the end of the fish pens there were three boats of fishermen side by side, they had been catching fish in the 13-15 inch range all day long.
The fish finally tired itself out on one last huge run. During the final run my reel was spinning uncontrollably with the handle doing around seven or eight revaluations per second and making a very high pitched screaming sound (the people in the boats gave me some rather irritated/jealous looks at this point). After that final run I slowly brought the fish up to the gap one inch at a time. When I finally got it up to the suffice I suddenly realized there was no way I could handle a rod that long with a fish that big and net it at the same time. And I looked around me and the only people available to help were a bunch of boys and girls under the age of ten.
Right then and there I pointed to a little boy who looked slightly responsible (he was maybe eight or nine) and told him he was going to net the fish.
I told him to follow my instructions very carefully, he nodded in agreement. So first things first I told him to put it in the water but not near the fish yet, he did so. I then pulled the fish close enough to break the surface. Then I told the boy to put the net under the fish, which he did, and then I told him to pull up with the net, which he did perfectly.
I am not sure what I was more proud of at the moment. My ability to give instructions or the boys ability to follow them, but either way, it worked out. The net was long so the boy was having trouble pulling it up onto the dock after it got out of the water, so I had another little kid grab the net closer to the hoop and together they got it onto the dock.
Right as the net touched the dock my hook came out of the fishes mouth. We also found that the fish had made a hole in the net with its head. But in the end....it doesn't matter, I got it in. The hook I had been using was a treble hook and I was noticing it looked rather deformed, so I took a look. One of the prongs was still in good shape, but one of the others was bent almost strait out, and the third had been torn completely from its bonds to the other two and had some how ended pointing with its shaft bent up next to my line (think of a J with an inverted J on top and you have the general shape of my hook). I also found that all total the fish had pulled around forty feet of fly line off my real (I could tell cause it was on the dock all around me at the end).
The trout was not a monster, it was only six or seven pounds, not one of the biggest ones swimming around. But it is still the biggest trout I have caught and made for what was probably the most difficult fight I have ever fought against a fish, because of the conditions I was fishing in.
Any ways. That is all for now. I know its a long post but oh well. I hope someone enjoys it.
