It’s has been a pretty wet past week but “neither rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these ‘FATC’ from swift completion of their appointed ‘fishing’ days”. Sorry, stole that from the postal service. With a trip originally planned for Cardiac Hill, the rains put the flooding Meramec river out of the question. So with a last minute decision (made the morning of the trip), four FATC took off for Montauk and outside the park. Jim Craig led the trip with Mike Oldani, Rick Doerr and Kenny Klimes along for the ride.
When the fly fishers arrived at Montauk the water was moving faster than normal but not bad and the depth was maybe a foot higher. So they geared up and hit the Current river. Catching was slow at first with Jim taking a huge lead in the count with his white bugger. The rest of us struggled but the fellowship was awesome and special on this day. We fished all the way to the “boulder garden” where we had lunch and then worked our way back up towards the park. Kenny worked on some Czech nymphing (he is Czech you know) and lost more flies than he caught fish. He’ll just have to work on this style of fishing a little more. No one got skunked but except for Jim and his white bugger the rest of us came pretty close. Mike Oldani was out to christen his new net and did with a BANG as he caught a beautiful 18 inch brown on a small leech pattern. Rick saved him and helped him net it – see pics.
The trout are there but probably due to all the rains and fronts going through the past several days they just didn’t want to play. The best patterns were the white woolybugger, some Czech nymphs and leech patterns. The gang wrapped up the day around 4:30pm and decided that BBQ was on the menu for the night. Kenny told Jim to go the back way to Cuba through Salem. He assured Jim that he would give him the directions since Jim was unfamiliar. Of course, Kenny was paying close attention and not talking away (all of that is untrue) – ok, Kenny forgot to tell Jim to take one of the turns and we ended up on a “long and winding road that led to the Hicks door” (sang like the Beatles). But, come on, we made it – didn’t we? A fun dinner and ride home solidified friendships and a great day on the water.
