Pigs Fly!

Sunday was one of those days at "the lake" that I rarely see in early June - no clouds, at least very few, until much later in the afternoon. Unfortunately, the wind was blowing inttermitently, keeping the hatch from kicking into gear. All the action was below the surface. The question was, how far below.

Without any fish jumping, I assumed that the emergers weren't in play, so I tied on a sparkle cadis pupae to my sinking #6 line and went "low and slow". Five minutes after kicking off the shore in my float tube, I was hooked into something and it wasn't the bottom. As usual I pulled the line until I had it tight and went to work reeling in the slack. Before I could get this fish on the reel, it took off! This was not the average 14-16" stocker. This was bigger...

A minute went by and I finally got this log onto the reel. Taking in slack as fast and as often as I could, this pig took back as much line as it could, running hard away from me as soon as he got a look at my ugly float tube and waiting net. The good news is that my "tippet" was just 4' of 2x. I learned a few years ago that when you're nymphing you can get away with a much bigger and shorter tippet. Heck, sometimes if the leader is ready to be changed, I just fish 5' of the leader and forget about the tippet.

When this fish jumped out of the water, it was a glorious moment. Being in the moment, I took in the clear blue sky, the gentle breeze, and the best part - three of my fishing buddies in the water around me watching me wrestle with this pig! Yahoo!

I hauled it in as quickly as I could, removed the fly, posed for a few pictures (I'll post them later), measured the beast on the skirt of my float tube (20"+) and put it back into the water. Turned out to be the only fish I pulled up from the bottom that day. Oh well, at least I got to see a pig fly.