First Fish on 3-weight Rod with HB-tied Fly

gitano · September 05, 2020, 01:35:31 PM

Hunterbug came up to visit and fish this last week. (He arrived on Monday, left on Saturday.) We fished every day except the travel days, and caught fish every day. There will be a whole story with pics, but I wanted to get the 'simple stuff' out of the way in a separate thread.

I've had a 7-foot, 3-weight flyrod for so long I can't remember when I bought it. This century - I think. Maybe not. Sometime early this century, Hunterbug tied some flies for me. (He's an avid flyfisherman, but not a nazi.) I have yet to use either the rod or flies.

Yesterday was his last day here and I knew a place with wild Dolly Varden (Salvelinus malma) that I thought I'd take HB to. There is a beaver pond where I regularly catch little, <12", dollys. Small, but they are very pretty. Furthermore, every 'real' flyfisherman needs to fish Dollys or brookies out of a beaver pond some time in their lives. It's a matter of principle.

The body of water is the Little Susitna river, and we were in the very headwaters in Hatcher pass. The beaver pond was a 1.5 mile hike and we walked along the stream on the way in. (There's another part of the story, but it's part of "HB's story", so I'll let it be told there.) The weather was OK when we started out, but got progressively worse as we neared the beaver pond. When we arrived, it was lightly raining, (very lightly), and the wind was significantly more than a 'breeze'. HB rigged his 5wt rod and I suggested where he should put his first casts. Wasn't long and he had landed his first.

HB fished for maybe half an hour, caught another fish and 'missed' a couple more. I had brought my 3wt and some of his flies, but for some reason I didn't have the motivation to rig up. When HB stopped fishing without taking a fish on a dry fly, I felt obligated to put on a dry and catch a fish. I really wanted to 'blood' the rod especially while using one of his flies.

I tied on a parachute caddis and commenced to flail the air. Dang! Missed it! A few casts later and I had the first fish on the 3wt rod, and was using a dry fly HB had tied. Here are the pics.
There's the whole shebang.

Here's a close-up of the fish. You can see how pretty they are. Typical of the beauty of charr. (Brookies, Dollys, lake 'trout', bull 'trout', etc. aren't trout. They are charr.) The way you tell a charr from a trout in the field is that charr have light spots on a dark background, and trout have dark spots on a light background.

Here's just the head, showing HB's fly.

I was quite tickled to have blooded the 3wt on a Dolly in a beaver pond using a fly tied by a friend.

Paul

sakorick · September 06, 2020, 04:23:04 AM

I loved beaver ponds and the cuts and brookies in Colo as a kid. You guys must have had a great time!

gitano · September 06, 2020, 09:40:58 AM

We were 'hard at it' from Tuesday through Friday.

Paul

Hunterbug · September 07, 2020, 07:43:23 AM

That was a beautiful fish and s great pond. Maybe next time I'll bring my 3wt just to fish there.

First Fish on 3-weight Rod with HB-tied Fly

gitano

sakorick

gitano

Hunterbug