Had an opportunity to fish a small private trout club in western Ohio. You would think the fishing would be so good that you’d sign up for their multi thousand dollar menbership waits of three years or more. But the opportunity to hobnob with the elite, crème de la creme of Ohio’s wealthiest fishermen (ladies included) had a small caveat: only a few of the visitors or members were catching fish!
“Stop fishing like a trout fisherman” were the words given to me by my pro fishing friend and mentor, Jerry Darkes. “These fish aren’t normal trout. They’ve been hatchery raised and then released into this constant temperature crystal clear creek. Waving your rod and standing visibly on the bank is not helping. Find what they want and feed it to them.”
When all else had failed, and I was not earning more than a look at a bunch of flies I had thrown, I reached into my fly vest and pulled out a black Polar Bugger that I had procured from Redd’s flies. I spotted an extremely large rainbow that had spurned my previous offerings and got above him. I cast about six feet in front of him and let the slight current carry the fly under the branches and into his lair. Then I began to twitch and pull the streamer slightly against the current. It seemed as if someone had rolled a bowling ball into the fly! Then my reel started barking out a warning that a big fish was on. I flipped the rod parallel to the surface of the water and pointed it away from him. He came upstream and I switched sides on him, and he pulled desperately against the current and the bend in my six wt. I switched again when he headed back downstream and the reel cried in anguish again, and he came back up. The fight was on now with only about eight feet of line and the leader. He still tried to wrap me around a submerged stump but I saw the black streamer in his jaw and knew the hook was buried. Almost seven minutes later I finally brought the large fat bellied rainbow to the net. The Redd’s Polar Bugger deep in his maw.
The Polar Bugger was the ticket. Every hole that had failed to bring a fish earlier in the day now brought glom strikes that defied logic. The big 22 inch rainbow was almost as big around as he was long. There was a big rarity, a tiger trout, and another twenty inch plus rainbow. I made it back to the car as my friend cleared my tackle with the head guide. What a Polar Bugger day!
