Winter is finally over here in the midwest, and it's about $&^$( time.  This hasn't been the worst winter we've ever seen here, but it was consistent and long - the first time in several years where, between Nov 15 and April 15, there wasn't one single reasonable day. Usually, we have a warming spell that will get into the 50s or 60s for a couple of days, and the urge to get outside overwhelms.  Not this year, and it felt looooong.

Last week, the tail end of April, Neil and I managed 2 days away, and we visited our favorite trout stream, Verdigre.  We had the good fortune to get away in mid-week, and we were the only guys fishing the entire creek.  Plenty of turkey hunters around, but no one on the stream.  First day, temps were in the 60s, but the wind was howling out of the south.  I was glad I had brought a 5wt, the 8013WT.  That's a new un-fished rod, 8ft, based in the Dickerson 8013, but made with weird geometry - a big triangle rather than the standard hex.  The rod is light and strong, and I was glad to have it's power to push flies into the wind.  Neil was using his Driggs and as usual, it was omnivalent.  We both caught fish in the morning, me out of the weir pool, using a long downstream drift and one of Neil's beautiful little wire midges hung under a dry...  Neil took a beautiful rainbow out of the top of the Phd pool.  45 minutes in the smoker, and those trout were lunch.  BWOs were hatching, but the fish would only hit small nymphs on the rise - no surface action at all.

A couple of 16-inch stream-born browns came out of the secret pool in the afternoon, and you always feel pretty special to catch a couple of big native trout in such a tiny stream (also, to put them back to keep the cycle going...)

A storm came through that night, and the next day proved to be consistently drizzly and gray.  You'd think that would make the fish happy, but they were jumpy and wary.  A small gray scud attracted attention in the Phd pool, but as is sometimes the case, it only worked for me, not Neil - the fish were out to snub him that day. Other days Neil rakes them in and I am the skunkee.   Neil stayed with his Driggs, while I tried out my second new rod, a Payne 98 clone, with bamboo ferrules.  I feared it might not have the muscle to project line-and-fly into tight spaces, but it was great, one of the lightest casting rods around.  The surprise fly of the day was a small sparkley streamer given to me by a friend - he ties them for use in Arkansas, and I had tried them there and here with absolutely no luck, but this day, it was a hot fly - just dangling the fly in the water downstream, getting ready to cast, rainbows would dash out from under a bank, look you in the eye, then ignore you and grab that glittery thing.  That sort of behavior carried through on different sections of the stream, fished upstream and down.  I've got to find some of that sparkle stuff!

It's always a good time on Verdigre, but when you can catch a few extra-nice fish, out of a couple of the most difficult pools on the stream, that's special, and a nice way to start the year.  Long live Spring!

Lee