HNFI Evening Flight, Beat 6....Second Session

Poppers are stippled and various coats of varnish have been added.  As such, we can return to the competition.

The first session was in the books and team J&M Flies was on the board with a rainbow and a smallie.  We thought we were doing really well until we started hearing reports of teams catching their limit of seven fish within 30-40 minutes.  Oh well.  At least we didn't get skunked.

We went off to lunch and then we did some scouting.  The evening session was to start at 1630 and end at 1830.  Greg and I were going to be fishing beat 6.  This beat ran from behind cabin 13 at the big pool up to just past cabin 15.  The pool behind cabin 13 is where I spend a lot of my time fishing when I am at Harman's.  I like it cause it is close to cabin 12 where the wife and I tend to stay in and has some great water that hold some big fish.  It is easy to get to and usually doesn't require any wading on my part.  That being said, the water by cabin 15 is also great.  For us though, the prime water in this pool was actually in beat 7 and not 6.  Beat 6 was the back end of the pool before the riffles that led down to behind cabin 13.  Greg and I scouted around and figured that we would fish the water at cabin 15 first and then beat feet down to cabin 13.  We had seen some hatch action the evening before and wanted to spend the rest of our time working this section of the beat.  We were hoping that we would be able to work the top water once the hatch started to come off.  BTW the hatch for those wondering was a mixture of stuff with Sulphurs being the biggest or most prevalent.  Here is the pool behind cabin 13.  I took this photo when we were there back in November of 2011.

Here is the pool behind cabin 15.  We were actually fishing the tail end of this pool all the way in the back of the photo.  Again, this was taken in November of 2011.

So at 1630 Greg and I, along with our judge, started working the top end of beat 6.  I think we spent maybe 30 minutes there before moving down to the bottom of the beat.  We just weren't seeing any action so we figured why stay?  I would like to take a moment here and explain something.  Greg, right before the session started, decided to check his work email.  He is a little like a crack addict in this regard.  I suppose the same could be said of me.  Well upon checking it, he relayed some rather disturbing news to me.  I, naturally, had to check my email to verify the information.  Upon reading it, I was pissed to say the least.  It wasn't great news.  I do believe that team New Jersey can vouch for just how angry I was.  It really put me in a bad mood and I allowed it to affect my fishing.  Not good.  So Greg and I tagged and I raced down to fish the lower end of the beat.

I started throwing a nymph to work the water column without so much as a nibble.  I tagged out and Greg tagged in.  He was also throwing a nymph.  I believe it was either a Prince or a Zug Bug.  Anyways, Greg managed to hook up with a rainbow shortly after arriving at the pool.  While he was landing the fish, I decided to switch to a dry fly.  We started seeing fish rising all over the pool.  It was time.  I tied on a size 18 black Trico.  I used this fly in November of 2011 with much success while at Harman's.  It had to work again right?  We really needed to put some fish up on the board.  Here is a photo of the fly I took last year

Almost immediately I hooked up with a fish.  In fact over the course of the next hour, I hooked up with four fish in all.  And I lost all four fish.  I couldn't believe it.  I was fished.  One fish, a huge brown, hit the fly like a freight train at the top end of the pool and ran all the way down into beat 5 before he popped the hook out.  Even the judge said it was a big fish.  After I lost it, he asked what was the matter with me.  I had to explain that I lost my mojo thanks to some bad news I received courtesy of work.  Greg, thank god, managed to land another rainbow while I was busy losing everything I hooked.  In the end, we only posted two fish for the session.  I was so pissed at myself.  I couldn't believe I (1) even discussed work (2) allowed Greg to tell me the info (3) checked the damn email myself and (4) allowed it to effect me as much as it did.  Later, speaking with Melissa, I learned that she had thought about emailing Greg and tell him not to pass the work info along but decided against it.  

So session 2 beat 6 was now in the books.  I didn't land a single damn fish and Greg landed 2.  I was stinking up the joint pretty badly.  I had teased Greg about him being my handicap during the competition and now it appeared as though I was the handicap!  Well, we still had one more session to fish.  We had to post our limit in that one or there wouldn't be a championship round in our future.  Could we do it?

Here are some photos

We're on the board!!