First fishing outing of the season

After the cancellation of the fishing outing planned last weekend due to unfavorable weather I finally did take yesterday morning the way to my favorite creek for early in the season without really knowing what to expect because major rivers in the area still have very high and strongly stained water. So I arrived around 10 hours and a half and I was pleased to find that the water level had dropped since the opening of the season and I saw along the path that the stream was about to regain its original color that is really more beautiful than opaque grey.

As always on this stream fishes rarely betray their position, in this shallow and narrow stream  trout are almost impossible to sight so it is to the angler to read the current and potential positions where to cast his kebari. I was fishing with a pattern with which I like to fish, the Zenmai-dou, and I was surprised to see it be taken dry on the first cast. To me pattern categories categories like "wet" or "dry" do not exist anymore as I like fishing with the most versatile ties that can be used at different levels. Trout and salmon parr did show themselves very active until that the kebari drifted straight into their mouth.

After lunch which was a bit more sunny than that of the opening day I decided to go downstream because the sector explored in the morning I had seen a lot of footsteps making me me think that this stretch had been visited very often lately. Fishermen are probably far more numerous than usual on this stream as large rivers still have very high water level and that brings many fishermen back on the small streams they usually shun.

It is in this corner that I started fishing again,  a delicate and accurate cast bringing my kebari in the quiet strip at the foot of rotten trunk made me take my first legal sized trout of the season. In my area the legal size if you want to keep a trout is 24 centimeters. 

After releasing it I decided to ignore a sector that I know well and that somehow I prefer to reserve for myself later I walked upstream again to go to a spot where I have not fished in a long time. Along the way, traces of fishermen passage faded and then disappeared completely which was good to me because unfortunately some fishermen do not leave only footprints behind. I will never understand how some people can consider themselves as fishing enthusiasts and use the streams banks as dumps. 

There are throughout the ten kilometers that measures this stream many construction remains and they often provide excellent trout shelters. My Zenmai-dou had dried along the way and I did cast to the right through the remains of what once was a wall. This trout shelter was so tempting that I could not resist casting my kebari there. It did not drift five centimeters before a trout rose and took it. I was actually really pleased; this trout was beautiful and it is with a smile on my face that I put this amazing fish back to water.

After this moment of satisfaction and joy I did collapse my rod, put my line back on a spool and did take the path back home. It was my first real fishing outing of the year, it went very well and that's the main thing.