Busted

Today we went fishing… but all was not well.

We started at the southern end of Lake Granby, Rainbow Bay I think. While dad was preparing the fly rods, he suggested I try my luck with one of the spinning rods, just to get started. I grabbed one of the rods, cast out, and was halted by a rat’s nest of monofilament line that formed around the reel… the lure never even got wet. The damage was enough that he decided it would be better to untangle later: One rod down.

Dad handed me one of the fly rods and commenced to learnin’ me to fly cast. I started with empty line so that, just in case I whip-cast, I wouldn’t snap any flies off the end. I didn’t do too badly but the line just wasn’t lying out like it should. Dad kept telling me to drive the rod forward like I’m driving a nail. As he watched my line, he coached me to “drive the nail harder. Really hit it.” By this time, I’m thinking, “Geez, this is a lot of work. My arm hurts.”

After a few more minutes of this, dad starts noticing that my form looks okay but the line still isn’t lying out right. “Let me see that rod,” he says and starts casting it himself. The line is acting very similar to how it was acting for me. “I think I’ve got the wrong weight of line on here,” he starts, “We’ll have to change reels later. I have some heavier line on another reel in the van.” Two rods down.

Shortly after that, we packed up and headed for a different spot. We decided that the fish weren’t running shallow enough and we couldn’t cast deep enough where we were.

We headed East along County Road 6 along the Southern edge of the lake toward Monarch lake. There were pull-offs sprinkled along the route, presumably for hunting and fishing but a few also made for good photo-ops. About eight miles down the road, there was a parking area near a bridge. On approach to the bridge, you could see a stream with mountains rising up behind. We pulled off to take some pictures.

As I was snapping a few shots, dad was observing the trout surfacing along the stream. The path to the stream was relatively short and wasn’t too steep. We unpacked the other two spinning rods (we had a total of 4 but one came in with line tangled around the rod) and headed down.

I decided to try my luck with a closed-reel spinning rod. Too bad it was the wrong kind of luck. My first cast landed a stick. I cast out a second time and started reeling in. A sizeable knot of line came down the reel toward me. I paused enough to let the lure sink a bit and catch on one of several bits of log, grass or whatever else was at the bottom of the stream. Dad was like, “Reel it in and get your rod tip closer to the lure.” I’m like, “I can’t, there’s a knot in the line.” Dad’s like, “Reel it in.” I’m like, “I CAN’T. There’s a knot in the line.”

Dad finally came over, took a look at the knot and decided to take over. He reeled the knot into the reel, freed the lure from the clutches of the evil Dr. Riverbottom, and set the rod aside. “We’ll have to fix that when we get back. I’ll have to open the reel to fix it and I don’t want to mess with it out here.”

Three rods down.

I spent some time working the stream with the last functional spinning rod but that wasn’t very productive. Dad had put a lure on the line that was small, gold, and fish-shaped. The line tied in the middle and there were double hooks on either end. This was the wrong lure for this stream.

Every time I dragged the line out of the water, the lure was either tangled to itself, it tangled to the rod tip, or it came up with river bottom moss clinging to it. Let me tell you, fiddling with your lure EVERY time you bring it out of the water makes fishing no fun no matter who you are.

Dad changed the lure [side note: dad is doing all of the luring because he’s much more knowledgeable about lure selection than I am.] and I worked a small area of the stream for about 10-15 minutes. He took over for another 5 or so while I took more pictures. Neither one of us caught anything.

Oddly enough, as we got in the car, we could see a LOT of activity… just up the stream from where we were fishing.

Go fig.