After my early '09 drought, detailed here, the floodgates are open, and the cold steel is flowin'!

Some fish from Saturday:

Great fish! I can see why people fall in love with trout fishing.

Those are gorgeous.  I'd love to try that sometime.

Very nice! Looks like great water color, and bright fish. Congrats!

Thanks guys, it was a great day to be out. Weather was actually pleasant - 38° and no wind.

Micro, if you get a chance to get up here, Kase and I will show you around. Gotta be in winter though - as soon as the lakes open up, I'm fishing for bass.

Paul, you got it! When the river is green, the bite is mean . The "Potato Hole" was really producing.

Man I would love to try that my co worker Dave is always raving about Steelies. Is that Kase V from nybass?

Yes, that's KaseV. I learn him about bass all summer, and he learns me about trout all winter. We've become pretty close friends since that day when he yelled out, "Are you Jay-Fran-Chow from the internet" across the outlet last spring.

I was just saying to some downstate guys that were in awe about the fact that it was pure silly that we can just "bang these big fish at will" up here. The fact is, it isn't that easy. No one I know can do it as well as my friend Kase. He comes up with fish in ANY river conditions, even blown out. And his fish are bigger than average, sometimes much bigger.  

I'm good at transitional fish, on the move or at the headwaters. I'm getting better at fish holding deep in pools or in the tailout of a run. Kase tears them up. One hell of a trout fisherman.

WOW!

WOW!

Exactly.

WOW!

Thanks guys.  RW, you'd be surprised at the gear I used.  Since we were fishing tight quarters, I decided to see how my St. Croix AVC70MM held up to these puppies.  I paired it up with a Daiwa Black Widow II BWII153 and Suffix Siege 8# in Tangerine orange.  The mono was brand new and treated with KVD L&L only, since temps were slightly about freezing.  I have the reel set up with a wet Carbontex drag stack.

The thing worked beautifully.  For those that think that this rod lacks backbone, you're sadly mistaken.  The moderate action, combined with a smooth drag set to one click south of 3# protected the 6# CFX leader.  When the fish wanted to run, I just let the drag peel out, and when I needed to put pressure on the fish, I simply thumbed the spool.  The extra give in the top half of the rod was just enough insurance to give me time to let my thumb off the spool, if the fish took off.  My only break offs were when the hook got hung up in the tailouts.  Using a baitcaster is preferable here, due to the ability to run the drift in freespool.  Contrary to other trout techniques where you cast upstream, floating generally requires a quartering cast and letting the rig drift unabated downstream.

My only complaint with the system is that I wish the rod was lust one foot longer.  Drifting the deepest holding pools requires a shotline below the float that is about 5' long.  Add in the 6" float above, and a 3' leader, and the terminal rig is nearly 9' long.  Makes impossible to land one by yourself.

This is my third time running this rig with these fish, and it is so good to get back to using a baitcaster for this.  I really have no desire to learn to use a centrepin, but I do need to get a longer rod for bigger water.

nice fish J

Very Nice Fish! 8-)

Took a new guy out to the ditches I usually haunt, and went 0-1 this morning.  The guys near me said I lost the "big one."  I didn't see it, and I didn't deserve to catch it anyway, since I stupidly thought I could do a better job than my drag controlling the fish.  Grabbed some lunch, and went back, stuck two rats, missed two more, and ran into my neighbor, so I stayed and fished until dark.  Not a bad day, all in all, and I was actually warm this morning!

Awesome fish J  ;D