I took advantage of the several days worth of cool temperatures to hit a favorite little stretch of a quality trout stream near me last night and was rewarded in fine fashion.
I tied my personal best for biggest "wild" trout caught. My first trout of the evening was a stunning 19.5" Rainbow trout that slurped a #14 sulphur I fished through a deep pool. Right on the take it immediately took a big run and caught me by surprise. Had I been using a 5x leader instead of 4x it would've been over with right there. It stripped line so easily that my reel was singing. It made run after run and even rubbed the line along a big boulder (I thought it was going to snap at any moment.)
I finally got it into the measure net and was stunned both at it's size and weight (it was a thick, muscular fish & not hatchery fat by any means) but also in the brilliant coloration. Very black spots on its back, flashy silver sides, and a brilliant, almost irridescent pinkish red strip from cheek to tail. It's fins were pinkish red in color with white tips, perfect and sharp to a point. It was such a beautifully large fish I was actually going to get my cellphone camera out from my back pack this time too, only then I realized I decided to leave it in the truck. I put wild in quotations because although I recognize that wild Rainbows aren't common at all, they are definitely in some of our better creeks & rivers and I'm 98% sure this trout was wild. Perhaps it was stocked as a 3-4" fingerling and has thrived and grown large over the last 3-4 years in the stream. This particular stream has been rumored for quite some time to have a small, sustaining population of wild rainbows as well as wild 'bows that move in and out from a larger river.
I tied my personal best for biggest "wild" trout caught. My first trout of the evening was a stunning 19.5" Rainbow trout that slurped a #14 sulphur I fished through a deep pool. Right on the take it immediately took a big run and caught me by surprise. Had I been using a 5x leader instead of 4x it would've been over with right there. It stripped line so easily that my reel was singing. It made run after run and even rubbed the line along a big boulder (I thought it was going to snap at any moment.)
I finally got it into the measure net and was stunned both at it's size and weight (it was a thick, muscular fish & not hatchery fat by any means) but also in the brilliant coloration. Very black spots on its back, flashy silver sides, and a brilliant, almost irridescent pinkish red strip from cheek to tail. It's fins were pinkish red in color with white tips, perfect and sharp to a point. It was such a beautifully large fish I was actually going to get my cellphone camera out from my back pack this time too, only then I realized I decided to leave it in the truck. I put wild in quotations because although I recognize that wild Rainbows aren't common at all, they are definitely in some of our better creeks & rivers and I'm 98% sure this trout was wild. Perhaps it was stocked as a 3-4" fingerling and has thrived and grown large over the last 3-4 years in the stream. This particular stream has been rumored for quite some time to have a small, sustaining population of wild rainbows as well as wild 'bows that move in and out from a larger river.
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