Posted: Thursday, March 6, 2008 12:00 am
Wes Smalling
Outdoors Editor
To the gigantic North Platte River trout (or whatever kind of leviathan creature you were) that twice - not once, but twice - ripped off my flies last Sunday, hear this: I know where you live.
I'm coming back for you this weekend like a bad action-movie sequel.
I'm coming after you like Rambo. Like Bruce Willis, Sigourney Weaver and Keanu Reeves rolled into one Die Hard-Alien-Matrix summer blockbuster. I'm gonna go Terminator on you, fish.
And I'm coming armed with, um, some heavier tippet next time.
The ice is off most of the North Platte at Gray Reef and the fish are really on the feed. The fishing is on fire.
Despite the snow coming down sideways on Sunday, it only took a few casts for me to hook into some action. I ran into lots of fish that were banging the usual dead-drifted flies - hothead leeches, red rock worms - but they're acting friskier than usual. They're not doing those lazy wintertime takes of sidling up and idly sipping your fly, making your strike indicator flutter slightly like it's got an itch. They're getting a full head of steam and slamming that fly with everything they've got, drowning the indicator in one big dunk.
Especially one voracious fish. I dare say that without ever seeing it, it must be an awfully big trout. Being a fisherman, I tend to exaggerate. It's in my nature. But I'm telling you, this was a fish of extraordinary size.
Usually when a North Platte fish hits your subsurface bug, your little poofball strike indicator gives just a twitch. It pauses in its drift. Maybe it sinks. Then you lift the rod to set the hook. I had hooked into a few fish that had sunk my indicator hard and I was having a pretty good day battling some decent-sized, stubborn trout.
Then, well, if a strike indicator could scream -
It was drifting along and - wham - it dove under, streaked upstream in a blur and flew up into the air sailing over my head with nothing left below it but a leader and a few inches of helpless tippet.
That fish snapped my 4X, 6.4-pound tippet like it wasn't even there. During winter I've been getting away with using 4X tippet, thinner 5X on some other waters. But man, the water is a tad warmer these days, just enough to get their blood pumping, so those fish aren't messing around. They're chasing down flies with a vengeance. Trust me, use 3X tippet.
Well after getting rooked like that, there's not much else to do but admit defeat, tie on a new rig and wade upstream to another spot. So I did. I caught a couple fish upriver and ate my lunch sitting through a mild blizzard. It was a lovely day.
On my way back to the truck, I stopped at the same spot where I'd been mugged only an hour or so before. Because I'm stubborn, and perhaps dumber than a 3- to 4-pound fish, I was still using 4X tippet. Big mistake.
I made one cast. The indicator sank, shot upstream like a rocket and the tippet snapped like a twig.
Fish, I know where you live.
I'll be back.
Look for Wes Smalling's outdoors column every other Thursday in the Star-Tribune Open Spaces section.