Best Trip In Quite Some Time (and a Christmas in April teaser)

I have stayed pretty busy recently, mostly with family things and have only been able to squeak in a couple of quick trips to Taneycomo. The trip I am writing about today was another quick trip, only two hours, that took place on April 2nd, my Mother's birthday. Even though it is one of my best fishing trips in recent memory it wasn't on some far away stream like we dream of throughout the work day in Colorado or Montana. It wasn't even a trip to a freestone stream here in Missouri. Heck, it wasn't even to a tailwater or a trout park. I wasn't even chasing trout for that matter. It was a trip to a muddy little cow pond full of stunted sunfish. but this is what made it so great:

 

After dinner and birthday cake with my mom; her, my wife, son and myself loaded up and went a fishin'. Preston caught a couple fish on a worm under a bobber and then caught his first fish on the fly! On a dry fly none the less!

After rigging my wife, son and mothers (it was her birthday and I probably still owe her a few hundred thousand from when I was a tyke anyway) for bobber n' night crawler fishing I finally started rigging my fly rod. Chelsea, my wife, had caught (and I had released) two small fish. (If you keeping score: Wife: 2, Grand Son,  Grandmother and Son: 0). So I finally make my first cast with a Clouser to search the muddy water for bass. WHAM! Big 'gill of the day. Hand sized! Before I had it landed, which didn't take long on my 4wt, Chelsea had another fish. I managed a few more casts that yielded nothing with the Clouser in between releasing fish and rebaiting hooks. Preston finally made connection with his first of the day and he was tickled! It was at that time that Chelsea realized that a couple of the smaller fish that had taken the hook into their gullet were now floating by her feet. This made her sad and she bowed out to sit in the Jeep and finish a book she had brought a long. Not long after that I switched to a elk hair caddis and white shammy worm dropper. This combination evoked a strike a cast from the small blue gill. The only problem was the little buggers could not hit the ehc even when I left it still. I managed very few hook ups, but the constant action was enough for Preston to decide he would give daddy's fly rod a try after all. He has cast a few feet of line in the yard an a couple different occasions but when I asked him upon arrival at the pond he wanted to fish the same way as Grandma and I did not pressure him to try it out. I had since switched to a tandem dry fly rig but removed the second fly in an attempt to keep it simple. I helped Preston with the casting since there was about 20' of line out, but then gave him complete control of the rod and instructions to set the hook when the fished jumped up and hit the fly. And that was exactly what he did! It wasn't by any means a first cast first strike hook up - he worked hard and was rewarded for his efforts.

Final Score:
Grandma: 0 (with three assists after switching rods with Preston at the first sign of a nibble)
Grandson: 4
Wife: 5 (and only fishing for half the time as everyone else)
Me: 6 (but it felt like I did a lot more work than catching 6 fish for some reason)

It is also noteworthy that this was Chelsea's first fish that can recall ever catching and boy was it big:

I think that it is safe to say that Chelsea and Preston are both one step closer to coming along on fly fishing trips with me.



Christmas In April:

What's in it and who's it from you ask?

Stay tuned and you will see!