Not every fishing trip I go on ends up in a YouTube fishing
video. Sometimes I just go fishing, other times nothing eventful happens. On one such trip, I tried to film but did not manage to catch any fish. It is
extremely hard to justify making a video where I explore some waters but
nothing really happens. This does not mean that nothing interesting happened or
that I did not learn a thing or two from the experience.
It was during a visit to Mammoth Lakes, California that the
wife and I did some exploring. Taking the scenic route to June Lake we ended up
exploring the creek from the lake more than the actual lake itself. To be
honest, I have no idea what this creek is called, so I will just call it June
creek. This also happens to be the time of year we explored the creek. Crystal
clear water made it easy to spot the odd fleeing fish in the few deep holes we
could see. The creek is not loaded with fish, but I just had to make a few
casts.
Directly behind where this picture was taken is a deep run.
A twelve-foot narrow, but deep trench in the creek. One sizable trout was
clearly visible at the end of this run. I attempted to have my flies drift down
towards the fish, but this is where I learned about drag. Flies have to drift
through the water in a natural way or the fish won’t be interested. Drag is when
the water on the surface moves at a different speed from the water below. This
drags your fly in an unnatural way and the fish ignores it completely.
One way to combat drag is to fish with as little line as
possible on the water. But that means getting closer, and with the clear water, the fish spooked and swam away. It was not all doom and gloom; I did manage to
hook two smaller trout. Sadly, both fish were lost while trying to turn on the
camera to film the fish. That is the risk I run when using barbless hooks to
try to keep the fish safe. By no means would this session have made a good video
for people to sit and watch. But it is still something I wish everyone can
experience for themselves.
Comments
Post a Comment