We had originally planned on Monday to fish for shoal bass and stripers in a different flow about an hour from the cabin, but with the rain we had overnight my buddy we were going to float the river with suggested that it may not be the best idea with the water rising and stained.  I was a little bummed because I was looking forward to fishing somewhere different and it seems like every time I try to make plans to fish for shoal bass the weather has other ideas.  At the same time I wasn’t too bummed because the creek was fishing better than ever and it wasn’t that bad of a backup plan.

We made it out to the stream a bit later than on Sunday and picked up where we left off.  I was having a pretty slow morning that quickly turned around when I caught back-to-back rainbows on dries.  Unfortunately on my next cast the tip of my rod decided to break off and go for a ride with the fly line.  I’m not sure how it happened, but it was on one of my favorite rods, a discontinued TiCr 7wt that I won in the CCA STAR raffle.  I’m not sure that TFO still has replacement tips for that rod, we’ll see what happens when I send it off.  I went back up to the cabin, grabbed a couple beers and the backup 6wt.

By the time I got back down to the creek Blake had made it to the spot where I had just taken two rainbows on dries.  Wouldn’t ya know that he soon caught one of the same fish I had caught.  We could tell by a black spot(looked like mole) that was on the left side of his head.  The merits of catch and release played out in a matter of 30-45 minutes.  We moved upstream to another spot that has been productive to us and after getting a crazy aerial fight from a tail hooked fish with my dropper Blake connected with a nice brown – dubbed “Cooter Brown” as that is what I was drinking at the time.  Dad had brought up a bunch of Jekyll beer from Alpharetta, pretty good stuff from my suburban homeland.

After that brown we headed up to the cabin for a Memorial Day feast as prepared by my parents – bacon wrapped scallops, shrimp kabobs, wings, and potato salad – we ate well the entire weekend.  We then drove over to a nearby waterfall for a short hike with the kiddos.  This was probably the highlight of the trip for Blake’s little toddler – he could have stayed for hours just throwing rocks in the water.

After the hike we had time for an evening fish.  Hoping to imitate the success of Sunday we headed back to the same spot and began nymphing our dry-dropper rig through the runs.  Just like the day before I hooked with a fish on one of the first few drifts.  It was a little football rainbow, short and fat with a nice kyped jaw.  It took a tiny rainbow warrior nymph.

Blake got in on the action with a kyped jaw rainbow of his own. As he was fighting his fish I hooked up with my own solid rainbow.  We didn’t realize it at the time but it ended up being the rainbow that Blake had caught the night before.  Jim pointed this out to us as I was sharing pics with the group who regularly fishes the creek.  Another big fish and another catch and release success story.