It is always a special day when you can join a friend on his birthday and go fishing! Yesterday was just such a day for Gerald and I. He picked me up at my house around 11 a.m., whereupon I immediately took him to a great lunch on our way to Dr. Allee's Trout Pond, way up off of N. Meridian Rd., for an afternoon of wonderful Kamloop Rainbow Trout fishing. The trout bite was very greedy for my birthday friend as he spent the afternnoon catching and releasing at least a dozen fat trout on his newly tied fly - a rather strange looking fly called,
The Poodle. Since it was such a productive pattern (clearly outfishing the usually most productive patterns of either the
Egg Sucking Leech or
Maribou Wooly Buggers), I must obtain the tying instructions from him and put it out here for you to try asap. I'm sure it will produce bream with the same equal efficiency as it captured the trout's attention. We were using # 7 & #8 weight rods with forward sinking tip lines, just as we would out on the salty flats for trout or reds, so as to get the flies down to the 12-foot bottom levels where most of the trout like to bite our patterns. However, The Poodle pattern proved to be as an effective fly as the recently discovered "Buddy's Chum Fly", a Salmon Egg pattern, colored or dyed black or brown, that closely resembles the chum pellets used to feed the trout in Galt's Pond! Gerald used a floating line, and a long, smaller test tippet, to entice the trout into biting his newly created pattern. I noted he imparted a faster retrieve when stripping in the fly line to trigger the trout's bite. It was especially interesting in that Gerald & I met a couple of other fly fishermen, not members of our fly club (FBBF) yet, out there doing a great job of casting and catching trout. As well, a father and son team, who did join out fly club before we left to go home that afternoon, were out there enjoying the afternoon of trout fishing. Boy, it's kind of neat when you can get in an afternoon of casting practice and catch some freshwater trout without that 8-hour drive to the mountains. We will be back, I promise. Next time maybe I can find out how to get some pictures in here so you folks can see what is going on out there.
