Georgia Surprise

I'm an hour North of ATL with work for the weekend.  I've been here a number of times before, and have wondered if the little stream here has trout in it. I've seen plenty of bear, deer, and turker before, so it does feel wild even though its a stones through from a housing develoment. I had low expectations for the stream because I have spent some days down here in the summer melting under the sun. They have bermuda grass for crying out loud.  I threw my gear in the car just in case I had time to fish.



I caught this guy in the first 5 minutes, and my interest was peaked.

 Most runs and holes that looked really fishy held fish. I was catching and hooking fish very similiar to the one pictured. Then I came to this hole and got two surprises.

I caught a slightly larger fish in this run that looked like a cut bow.  It looked like a rainbow with the typical cutt throat marks under its mouth. I have no explanation for that fish.  The marks were subtle, but they were there.  It was raining, and I only had my phone as a camera, so i didn't get a picture.  A few cast later, my rod doubled over, and I had a fish hooked that appeared to be around 14 inches.  It jumped and spit my hook. I never felt like I had a good hook set.  It was one of those "Do I have a fish on...yeah I do" hook sets.

I came back to that same hole later, with hopes of hooking that 14 incher again.  Since the rain subsided, I snapped the pic of the hole, and hoped for a good fish picture to follow.  I ran a couple of nymph combos through with no luck.  I then tied on a streamer that consists of only lead eyes and gold and copper flash-a-bou. I got a couple of short strikes and saw the fish chasing it. I repositioned above the hole to let my streamer dangle in the current, and got an eat, and a hook up!  The fish quickly wrapped me around a log and spit the hook again. Freakin' bandit.

I landed 5 or six in a couple of hours and missed more. All rainbows.  I'm stoked to do more exploring and fishing next time I'm down here.  

Georgia surprised me today