Off to Whip Some Trout

I'm off to go, as TKW so lovingly put it, "Trout Whipping" or as Zonker put it "Trout Snuggling" tomorrow and Friday. Yes, I am playing hook-y from work and family life, shirking my responsibilities, to go fly fishing for trout. To heck with Gas prices I say (right now) politics and everything else...man that sounds kinda callous don't it??

This time of year trout fishing is done at night, in the dark. Weird as that may sound, it is some of the most exciting fishing there is and gets ones adrenaline going. Trout eat insects. And the insect that is the new york strip of insects in the Hexagenia Limbata or giant Michigan May-fly. Trout Love 'em as much as kids love chicken nuggets And not just any trout. BIG trout! Big Bugs catch Big Trout!

Hexagenia Limbata (Or just "HEX")

It starts like a rise of small trout. There small rings on the surface, little fingerling trout eating midges, perhaps. But these are no fish.

Then, the water breaks, and up pop the yellow sails of a giant Hexagenia, then another and another. Then there is a flash below the mayfly and it vanishes in a slurp so loud it echoes off the distant bank. A square tail, like a shark fin, breaks the surface behind the swirl as a brown trout twice the size of your net turns back toward his deeper lair. The Hex hatch is on.

This event plays out every year on calm, dark, humid nights in early July. Anglers who only fly fish once a year drive hundreds of miles to play their part in the drama, while the mayflies themselves make the television news by showing up on doppler radar or calling snowplows out of dormancy to remove layers of Hexagenia duns from the bridges. In the cold trout rivers of Wisconsin and Michigan, huge nocturnal brown trout whose usual menu consists of smaller browns become, for a week or so, prime dry fly quarry.

Fishing at night, In the dark is full of challenges Usually you cannot see what your casting to...your casting to sound...you can't watch your back-cast either...or see where your walking in the stream. If your unfortunate, you can turn somewhat claustrophobic surrounded by the darkness...you think you hear things in the woods, just off the bank, behind you, that arn't there yet your mind races with all sorts of horrors from Cougars to Black Bears to Jason of Friday the 13th movie fame lurking in the darkness. It's just wierd-exciting fshing!

The best thing about night-time fishing is that there are no bad casts!

I can't wait to get in the water and wet a line!