Surprise Of A Day

What the F you looking at?

         I had the pleasure today to do some fishing with one of my good fly fishing buddies, Lenny. He lives a little over an hour away from me, so we do not get out much. However, today he made the trek up from the Philadelphia area to explore a stream with me, that I have never fished. I consider this stream a home water for me, but I always thought of it as a put and take stocked fishery. Until a little mouse told me a secret.....wild fish, and nice ones. He never told me though that one of the wild species were rainbows. Imagine my surprise when I saw a 3-4 inch bow with beautiful  par marks laying in my net later on in the day.
         This did not come until about 2 hours into our exploration, and I had only landed one bow in the 10 inch range. Lenny, looked at the ten inch fish and made the comment " man that is a nice holdover, I mean it almost looks wild...".
        No freaking way wild bows are around here though. Those things only exist on the Upper D and Cumberland Valley streams, right?

Frenchy in the snout

      We were five minutes from leaving the creek in disappointment. We found some nice holding water and Lenny tried his luck with the George Daniel's technique (Euro) and had no luck. I decide to test it out with my set up. I am using a strike indicator. First cast and I have a small fish come up and try to eat my indicator. I laugh and cast again. Same dang thing happens. I get Lanny to come over and watch, because obviously it will happen again. he comes over and instead of a rise, I get a hook-up, but lose the fish. same thing happens the next three casts. Keep missing them, then SNAG. Crap, I have to go into the hole to get lose. Lenny stops me though and ask for a try. So, I maneuver my snag out of the way for him to try to hook up. Waddya know. The little guy up above comes to hand. We look at each other in astonishment. Holy Sh*t, is that what I think it is? A couple more come to hand and we are just pumped! We decide to walk another 1/2 mile upstream and it does not disappoint. I miss one or two nice size fish and we are literally talking about turning around because of the time. I ask for 5 minutes to fish a very small section of holding water and BOOM hook up! 13-15 inch wild brown starts rocketing up and down the creek and doing an aerial display. I can still here Len saying "Don't lose him, dumbass". I finish the deed and get a couple pictures and our day is complete. A pleasant surprise for a chilly December afternoon.You better bet, I will be back for those big boys that came off though.

Fins as sharp as razor blades.

Do not put your fingers to close, I will bite.