Micks Bassday

Mick and I decided to head out again on Tuesday, a bit of a celebratory trip for Mick's birthday.

Well the small ones started early as per usual, but it was much slower than out last trip, the bass basically wanted the fly to sit dead still for about 30 seconds before they would go near it.

I'd just finished building a small fly rod to use in the kayak, my 9 foot rod was just too hard to handle when trying to land the fish, so I got an old rod and some bits of old broken beach rods and started to create a nice rod around 6'6". I flounder with the size difference at first but once I got into the rythym I was soon extremely happy with my new creation.

We worked the banks for a while for a few small fish before Mick hooked up to a nice fish around 29cm, from here they just got bigger for Mick with a 32cm fish coming about 15 mins later.

We decided to swap banks and we worked the shady hole under the trees, sometimes we could even sight cast our fish and sit quietly in the kayak until the fish decided to eat the fly.

The action slowed a little and it had been about 1 hour since I'd had any hits, while Mick was still catching the odd small fish it wasn't until we drifted up the river into a nice shady hole that the fish came on again.

I'd just called out "I'm on" when Mick also hooked up, this time it was a nice fish around 350cm and Mick was grinning again. It wasn't the 400 plus he was looking for, but it was still a nice fish and it was good to see him smiling on his birthday.

We fished for a while, with still more 25cm fish hitting our flies, it was at this point that I thought Mick had caught his birthday present until he called out again "I'm on", it wasn't a big fish, but when you love your bass as much as Mick, to see a tagged fish and be able to record the details, it topped off a great morning fishing.

Happy Birthday Mick

Cheers,

Fordy