Comments (1)

By MattTucker, February 1, 2010 8:20 am

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.

Comments (6)

By MattTucker, November 16, 2009 6:00 am

Last week I had the absolute pleasure and honor to teach my 7yo daughter how to tie her first fly (a Red San Juan Worm with Pink Thread), it took her 4 times of watching me tie one and about 10 times of watching me show her how to whip finish and she was off.  Within short order she had tied up a dozen flies that looked pretty darn good.  I am going to catch  some video of her tying for the site, because I like to brag.  The key to teaching her the whip finish was showing her how the thread will create a number “4″ when it is in the proper position; once she saw that it was game on.

I was supposed to catch up with Brian Wise to work out some details of the upcoming “Trip” that we are making over Thanksgiving weekend, so we used the opportunity to meet and discuss the trip in detail while taking our kids to Dry Run Creek.  We rolled in fairly early in the morning and as I was helping Hannah into her youth waders she told me to just “leave your flies in the truck” if only I would have listened to her.  The first place we stopped, on her first cast, with her first fly she tied herself, she landed a fish.  I don’t think I could have ever been more proud of her.  Now we get to work on mending line on the water and a few other things, but she is doing great.  She even stepped up throughout the day to help net Parker’s fish as well as completely unhook her fish, take it out of the net, and release it.  Lots of fish were caught and it was a great 3hours on the water with our kids as Brian and I worked out our plan of attack for the thanksgiving day trout massacre.  As the kids were getting tired of fishing, we headed to town for lunch and Hannah and I drove back to St. Louis.  A lot of driving, but Hannah is already tying more flies and looking forward to heading back down.  It was awesome.

–Matt Tucker