Holiday BWO Assault Begins. Underground Forgets Camera.

Overcast skies, drippy weather, low flows, and a free pass for the afternoon. What’s that spell?

BWOs, my friends. BWOs.

Camera-Free Zone

Chris Raine and I drove to one of our BWO runs, fired up our bamboo rods, waded into the river, and discovered I’d left my camera in the truck.

That was a blow; the Underground is all about enjoying the visual aspect of the fly fishing experience as well as the verbal.

Because I spare no expense in bringing my readers quality online fly fishing entertainment, I engaged an artist to render the epic battle between myself and the first fish I hooked, who jumped twice and easily went 18″.

This artist’s rendering illustrates my epic battle with an 18″ fish. Note the trout’s bright colors.

Sadly, after two long runs and a lot of fly line through the guides, the hook came loose when he was a rod’s length away.

The next fish was a beautiful, strawberry-striped 14″ rainbow that ate a #18 BWO emerger, and after landing him, removing the hook and releasing him, my stinging hands needed a good five minutes to warm up.

The delay wasn’t a problem. The BWOs were coming off well, but few fish rose to meet them. I hooked three of the four fish I covered, with the first and last both in the 18″ range. Sadly, only the smaller of the three stunk up my net.

The conditions were encouraging. There just weren’t enough fish.

Providing a little relief to us aging fly fishers and our fading eyesight was bump in size; the bugs have grown from the #22 of late Fall to the #18 we’re seeing now.

The Hot Fly? My #18 brown-olive emerger with brown poly trailing shuck and white poly wing.

With the Holidays upon us, expect more cutting-edge fly fishing reportage - from the online’s most-sophisticated provider of the genre. See you at the drawing board, Tom Chandler.

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