Every Mothers Day I re-post this “Mother’s Day memorial” in honor of my mother who passed away over two decades ago. I confess that she never truly understood my obsession with fishing but like any dutiful mother she did everything she could to support it. More than anyone else, she recognized my love for angling early in my formative years and nurtured it in a way that only a mother could. She stoked the flames that made me the angler I am today. On this day each year, I fish to remember and honor her. You may not understand why I fish to honor her but she certainly does.

This year the small creek of my childhood fishing dreams lived up to my memories and more. It’s a beautiful little limestoner winding through the woods broken up by a few small ledge systems and clusters of wood washed into the creek bed by early spring rains. It’s the perfect habitat for its native book trout, wild browns and occasional stocked rainbow. On this special day, I was able to catch at least one of each species during my handful of hours on the water.

The first taker of the day was one of the creeks original inhabitants. A colorful brook trout. What the trout lacked in size it made up for in it’s veracity. It attacked my old school size twelve Prince Nymph with a thud making me think it was a creek monster! A short fight on my three weight and a couple quick photos and the fish made his way back to the fast run where his buddies where rising on some unidentified bugs.

I took a brief coffee break and switched my 10 ft BVK 3wt into it’s 8 foot dry fly mode. I had waded to a new section of creek. I didn’t see any risers but like any good angler, my optimism exceeded the reality of the situation. I was going to dry fly fish come hell or high water. Ha ha!

I managed to force feed my Elk Hair dry fly to a couple unsuspecting trout. This beautiful wild brown trout was one of them. The rise was so slow it took all I could to hold off on the hook set. I could almost count the trouts spots as i watched it glide out of the depths and engulf my fly. It was perfection!

I soon came to the unfortunate realization that the dry fly bite was non-existent so I switched back to nymphing. The unlikely duo above produced double digit trout for me as I hit the last pool of the morning. A GTI Caddis and Kabari Tenkara fly that I tied this past week. I caught trout on both flies but the GTI outperformed the Kabari by a thin margin. I’ll definitely be stocking my fly box with more of these flies. Both are very “Caddisy” if that’s even a word! Ha ha!

The third species of the day, a nicely colored rainbow trout, came on my first cast with the nymphing duo! The Kabari Tenkara fly got this trout! I had tied a few just as an experiment. I’ve used them on several occasions on a dropper off a dry fly and as the upper fly on my Euro nymphing two fly rig. They worked well for both. I may have to invest in an actual Tenkara rod one of these days.

I had one last cup of coffee stream side before walking back to my vehicle. Being here, on this creek, always brings back fond memories of my mother who single handedly stoked my fire for the sport that still burns strong inside me. Thank you mom.. and we miss you!