Prolific Jacobs Fork

Last week as I was wrapping up, I did quick recognizance of the upper section which I had not fished in years. It looked like good dry fly water, so when I arrived about 9:20am I drove to the upper parking lot and jumped in just above the bridge.
Tally ho! I was off to a good start.

How do like that hat action! Remember "Wild Kingdom"- Stan Stock (he was the original crock wrestler before Steve Irwin.) Plenty more where that came from mate... I cleaned that pool out completely. Right after that pool I switched over to a dry fly because the water was "perfect dry fly" and with out much delay, got right into them.
These are not in order, but wanted to get to the punch line, these were the biggest, but there were many more that were just a little smaller than these behemoths! I have a secret technique for taking these big fish in deep pools. They have seen a bunch of piscators and a bunch of flys, but as you can see from the pictures and the video, I have found the secret sauce for these trophies.




Don't you like how she posed with her head against my reel!




Look at the girth on this fellow! No joke, these fish are hard to land because you can't get one hand around them. I seriously need a net! I have to wear them down until I can safely set my rod down and reach down and haul them up with both hands!
After Pablo demoed his video prowess, I was sitting eating and chilling and saw this fish rise in the pool right in front of me... dare I????





After several more fish on dry's in this upper section, the stream was becoming narrower and there were a ton of kids running up and down the trail and some playing in the water above me ("come on kids- what are you, raised in a barn!). Plus, I had a meeting scheduled back at the office for 2pm, which after 30 minute on the water I had decided I was going to be "unavoidably detained" so I needed to get back to my car and at least try to give the bloak a courtesy call! So I jumped out and headed back down stream. Meanwhile I noticed a fisherman working his way up a couple of hundred yards behind me. "Hey mate," I called out as I walked past him, "any luck?"... "Not a thing" he morosely replied... "Yeah," I hung my head, "me neither,well, good luck!"
I made my call and notice on my black berry that Pablo had called- it was killing him I know. I headed back down stream, hoping against hope that no one had jumped in at the rangers house (the section far removed from road and trail, where the stream get's tight and deep and the big fish reside). To my sheer joy, I found the spot empty, so I parked and trotted past the rangers work building and lawn mowers and eased back into the water... this day had been great, could it become prolific?


This rainbow came out of the same big pool where I took he monster brookie last week. I stalked her for several minutes, getting into meticulous position and then patiently waiting for the fish to ignore my presence. The tricky part was avoiding all the smaller fish in the pool. I had to wait for this one to come to where I could cast to her and then, "do that thing I do" with my secret fly and once she took it, she ran the length of the pool, yanking the line out of my hand and taking me to the reel. Scared me that I wouldn't be able to land her, so I fought her around for several minutes until she was sufficiently subdued and then eased her into my hand. Unfortunately this was toward the end of the day and I didn't have enough memory in the camera to take video (though of course right after I released her I realized I could delete some less entertaining vid and have room, alas). After I took the 'bo I had seen a brookie at least as big as the rainbow so I worked back into position and had a shot at him, but he must have just barely had the fly because when I struck I just had him on for a second and he was gone- have to look him up next time.

And the finale.....

So there you have it.. and by the way, I did end up with an eastern triple crown, brookie, brown and rainbo. Only caught one brown right before I jumped out of the dry fly water higher up were I started.