the rainbow connection

yesterday evening, i caught that big old rainbow up above.

now, i know my crappy camera phone doesn't do it justice, so let me break it down for you. the bow of my net - or opening - is 15 inches wide. the bottom of the net, where the fish is resting, is probably 13 inches wide. the fish is much longer than the bottom of the net, and as a result its head and tail are curved up about 5 inches on each end. 13 + 5+ 5 = 23 inches.

that's a 22 to 23 inch rainbow you're looking at. that's a big damn fish.

a fish like this is probably 4 or 5 years old, and will likely make it another few years. it was battle scarred on its sides, but the coloring was just a riot of reds and pinks and greens. and it gave me the longest fight i've had yet this summer - it took about 15 minutes to get the fish in. it simply would not give up. i was dragged up and down a stretch of river, across currents, above pools and below them. when it took line, it took 10 yards in about a second and a half. at one point early on, when i knew i had a big fish on but not how big, it jumped out of the water heading directly at me, cleared a good 4 feet, and landed so close to me that the splash hit my leg.

i was absolutely thrilled to land a fish like this by myself. it was kind of the culmination of my summer of fly fishing.

nerdy fly-fishing guy info (mostly for geno):
2 piece, 9 ft, 5 wt st. croix rod (jenn's new rod, actually)
9 ft 5x leader
big parachute adams as my dry fly
6x tippet for the dropper
size 20 copper beadhead zebra midge as the dropper

the fish took the midge. what a fish this big was doing feeding on an "insect" this small, i don't know. i cast up and into a current seam that's above a very slow pool, and this spot had befuddled geno and me because of how many different water speeds are running through it. i started using an upstream mend, which got me a longer more realistic dead drift. the rest is a blur.

because i'd like to use every post to write about fishing, i've decided to control myself and curtail it a bit. from here on, i'm requiring myself to write 3 normal posts for every 1 fishing post. if i can't manage this, i may start a separate fishing blog.

in other news, i go to a 2 day conference tomorrow in grand junction for marmot, the online catalog cooperative we share with several other western slope libraries. i get to sit in on a panel for the e-reserves module that we've been using, so that ought to be interesting.

and, finally, robbie dudie has a biiiiiiiig interview with the phoenix fire department on thursday morning. the man has changed his life in many good ways, committed himself to the pursuit of a very cool career, and has done a lot of work to get himself this far. i know a lot of us are real proud of him. if everyone could kind of focus their good karmic energies in the general direction of arizona at 10 a.m. pacific time this thursday, i'm pretty sure robbie would appreciate it.

that's all.