My 7yo daughter, Hannah, and I have taken four trips to Dry Run Creek since her interest in fly-fishing began.  Each trip is really special for me, as she always seems to pick up on something around the house and she applies it to the stream to “be like dad”.  Just prior to our last trip to Dry Run in November, I had taught her how to tie San Juan Worms and gave her permission to get into my fly-tying stuff any chance she wants.  Needless to say, she now has about 4 dozen sjw’s tied up ready to fish.  She had been on me for awhile to fish again, but she didn’t want to go when it was supposed to be “too cold”.  So I took advantage of the forecasted 50 to 60 degree weather we were supposed to have  the weekend of January 23, and we picked to drive down Friday after work, stay in a hotel in Mountain Home, get up and fish until she grew tired and then drive back to St. Louis.  I knew that I was going to spend more time in the car than on the stream, but that didn’t seem to matter as we were heading out fishing.

We got on the stream on Saturday morning about 7:15am and dawned our waders and hit the water.  We fished upstream of the handicap access platform on the stream (which by the way they are extending upstream).  She was in to fish pretty immediately, after a few words of encouragement about her casting.  I netted the first fish and immediately she was reaching for it in the net to unhook it and release it.  At that point, I was tickled pink as our first trip to the stream she really didn’t want to touch the fish, but now she was unhooking and releasing the fish in the water.  I think she has watched too many of my home-made fishing videos and bass fishing guys on television though, as the first fish she caught she gave it a little kiss and back into the water it went.  I tried hard not to laugh, and I don’t think she noticed.

We fished for a little more than 4 hours on Saturday, but quit because her feet were getting cold in the Cabela’s boot foot waders that she was wearing.  In total she probably caught close to 40 fish (I quit counting at 25 early in the morning) and had me busy netting fish for her.  I had brought all my photo / video gear with me, but she kept me busy netting fish that I didn’t really have any time to shoot any quality photos, and only used my P&S once to snap two photos of her with one of  the fish.  It was a nice change of pace to fish with her and not have a camera around my neck the entire time and just enjoying the time together.

She did hook into 3 serious fish on the trip — each well over 20″.  The biggest fish that she hooked in to was the biggest brown that I have seen in the stream and when she hooked it the hook actually straightened and pulled out.  She took it like a trooper throwing her arms to her side and then looked up at me and said….”oooohhhhh that was a big one.”  I think she may be hooked.