Days.....days left

Ah.....The end of school is so near. I cannot wait to hand in my final papers, projects, write some finals, and finally be done with this semester. I am actually surprised at how much I am going to miss teaching the 6th graders at Lucile Erwin in Loveland,CO. Over the past few months I have gotten to know these kids really well, and enjoy going to class....strange, considering initially I was hesitant to request placement in a Middle School.

Finally got out on to some water the other day. I got off work early on Saturday to go up to Drake, CO to meet up with the Cotinga Club. Here is a link to some pics of the event (I am in the 3rd pic by the window black jacket). This is a local group of guys who get together roughly every month to tie some salmon flies. It was a great time, and I hope to attend the meetings as often as possible. I could tell there was a lot of talent there, and I want to absorb as much as possible in my quest to to tie full dress salmons. We ended up tying a few flies, BSing, and then split up to hit the water for a bit. Initially it was windy and overcast, however by 1ish it had cleared up nicely. I was armed with a bunch of new gear including my 7'6" Kettle Creek fiberglass 5wt, new Simms Riversheds, Martin 63 reel (vintage), Cortland line, and 4 full boxes of flies. I strung up my normal rig, a 3 foot furled mono leader, 2 feet 4x, 2 feet 3x, Copper john, and a red-head peacock (RHP) soft hackle off the bend of the john. The day started off right, first cast = first trout of the season. A fairly nice rainbow to for the Thompson (see pic below). I ended up pulling another 5 or 6 good size rainbows out of one hole not much larger then a dinner table. The soft hackle was the ticket that day, every single fish I took was to that fly. I tried other soft hackles, but the RHP was the only one workin. I started having a little better luck when I switched the copper john out for a Bergman March brown winged wet. Once I made the switch I was getting equal hits on both the March and RHP. I was also pretty impressed with the density of fish in the stretch I fished. A LOT of rainbows, and quite a few browns in such a small piece of water.....which is exactly why I love the Thompson. You will be hard pressed to pull a record out of their, but you wont stop catching nice 12-15 inch trout.