Trout

Met Brad and his brother and father-in-law Saturday for some evening fly fishing on the Rush. Brad and I jumped in the Trimbelle by the Gas Lite bar while we were waiting for Grant and Jerry to show up. Despite a never ending stream of people walking right down to the water where I was fishing, I managed to get two small browns out of a riffle. Once everyone was there, we headed over to the Rush. Cars everywhere, so we decided to hike in through a small coulee. Some local comes up the road, super pissed. In a Dick Cheney voice he keeps yelling, "Dutch Coulee, Dutch Coulee!" or something like that. He looked about a case-and a-half of Miller Lite's into the evening, so we headed up the road and fished Lost Creek, 3rd bridge up. I hiked up past the curve and worked the tailout of a small riffle. Caught two nice-sized brookies on a Yellow Humpy. I forgot how much fun it is watching a trout smack a dry fly off the surface. We headed back down to find Grant and Jerry, and hiked into the Rush. I found a nice riffle that tailed-out into an elbow shaped pool. I pulled in 5 nice browns on a Bead Head Prince (#18) in the course of about 45 minutes. Then it died down. I hiked upstream and worked a couple of sections with no luck. We met Grant and walked back down towards the pool I started at and waited for Jerry. I made a few casts into the pool and hit my best fish of the day, a nice fat brown trout, about 12-13 inches. With the sun dipping behind the bluffs, we called it a day and headed back to the Gas Lite.

At the Gas Lite, there was some hillbilly band playing AC/DC, Joe Cocker and countless other "classic rock" hits at the bar. The best part was this one yokel doing some crazy Elaine Bennis/Seinfeld dance around the bar (with shoes removed for better sliding action). Earlier in the day there was a car-smashing event, and according to the sign out front, "Thrsdays all can beer $1". Yes folks, this is the land of my ancestors.