Sunday Afternoon With Arron

Arron Varga and I had arranged to meet to fly fish together this afternoon. It was freezing! This summer has been one of the oddest that I’ve ever experienced.  With a brisk wind blowing, and the temperature only about 10C,  I wasn’t properly dressed.  I didn’t realize how chilly it was before I left the house.  The wind was blowing right through my jacket and shirt.  But overall it was still an enjoyable several hours.

After I arrived, I tied on this fly and almost immediately, lost two fish using it.  Then about 20 minutes later, brought to the net a nice 14 to 15 incher.  Arron finally managed to hook a trout which turned out to be a very nice sized one on a leech pattern.  arron-varga-20090830 At one point, we thought we might have to give Ian James a call, who successfully cut his leader to unwind it from around an anchor rope with a fish on the other end. Arron’s fish seemed to want to flee to underneath the platform we were on and it appeared it might have wrapped the leader around a post.

But Arron managed to steer the fish away and successfully netted it. A quick photo was taken and the fish was released back into the water.

There were a few fish that were grazing the surface of the water, and we thought they were after small minnows that we could see. Schools of them were swimming around, almost right under us, and every so often a trout would splash in the area.

After Arron’s fish, the action seemed to completely die down.  Sometimes I wonder if fish can communicate with other fish when that happens: “Hey! I just got caught. Careful what you try to eat.”

Eventually, Arron had to leave and I continued to fish even with the cold wind blowing and managed one more rainbow then called it a day with my fingers simply too cold to work properly and my bones shivering.  As I wrote above, this summer has been one of the oddest with very cool temperatures. If the trend continues, we’ll be having snow in September!

Arron is off to Fernie, British Columbia in a couple of weeks with “Team Osprey” to compete in this year’s “Canadian National Fly Fishing Championships.”  If I don’t see him before he heads off, I’d like to take the opportunity now to wish him and the rest of the team all the best.  I believe they will do well.

Here’s the rainbow Arron had today:

arron-varga-2-20090830

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