The Pecos continues to open as the weeks progress. We have a few snow storms that try and bully us around but their bark seems worse than their bite. It will snow with intensity for a few hours off and on but once it stops the temperature cannot support it.
I was extra excited to get out on the water this weekend because of two things. 1) I have brand new line on my reel and 2) I will be using a furled leader for the first time.
The furled leader I came across was at the Reel Life’s garage sale. They were two bucks a piece so I couldn’t pass them up. I have always heard about them and now I would finally see what all the hoopla was about. The leaders I bought were unithread in a green color and 7 feet in length. Now I usually fish with a 7.5 foot leader so the first order of business was taking a couple feet off them. All I did was go from large end to small end and tie a perfection loop then snip off the excess of the large end. Easy, now I have a 7 foot furled leader.
I put anywhere from 3-4 feet of tippet on that day. I started with 3 and moved up to 4 as I moved into a deeper pool. I was fishing one of my Green Rock Work (Caddis Larva) Patterns with various droppers. They always seem to hit that Larva though but I did get a taker on a red bead head midge. I had been throwing various colors of midge out for the last few trips on the pecos and I have to assume this is related to them also liking very small red San Juan Worms.
The first fish of the day wiggle off but I could see he was on the Larva. The next fish was the motivator that took the red midge. He was small but obviously hungry.
His spots were small and he didn’t have the usual look of the Browns in that river.
I kept working this pool from a good distance as I could not find my hippers for some reason. I was wearing my knee high insulated North Carolina Specials so I was limited to where I could go. Well, pretty much all I could do was step off the ice into the water and that was about my max depth. It was right on the edge and a couple of times a little water spilled over into the boot.
So I was throwing long casts that I am not necessarily used to. I even conjured up visions of the turbo spey casting videos I watched the other day and practiced that a bit. I felt a couple of them do their thing but I was unsuccessful at getting any type of consistency.
I got the line where it needed to be and pulled in a nice looking Brown who was also hungry for some green larva, who can resist? They actually look really soft and bugggy when they are wet.
So I need to mention how the leader performed. It was excellent. I loved how it rolled out the tippet with ease. I even tried a little dry fly action and it presented excellent. Much better that any tapered mono leader I have used.
I think this will be a new staple for me. The only thing I will do next is get my hands on a furled leader made of mono and see how that stacks up to the unithread leader I had.
I also want to say that the leader made the fight a bit easier. I tend to see a lot of fish wiggle off my line but not today. Only one fish popped off and in my book that is an improvement. I will have to get out for a full day with the leader and see what ratio I have after a dozen or so fish.
All in all though I think I am a changed man…
