Rainbow trout from an irrigation ditch
Who says ditches are boring.
One of my MBA classmates tipped me off on an irrigation ditch that was beaming with trout. Odd I thought, but certainly worthwhile exploring. So this morning, with my legs still burning from yesterday’s two hour speedskating session, I decided to go try out fishing in a ditch. I even managed to convince Katie to buy a license and come along, though unfortunately the temperature was already too warm for our bulldog Sherbert to join us.
I grabbed my 7.5′ Orvis Superfine 3-wt and we headed out with a quick stop for the license. Of course, as we were being lazy on a Sunday morning, it was already 10:45 by the time we parked. We wandered the ditch, stopping to watch the numerous spawning rainbow trout. It was decidedly odd seeing so many 12-18 inch trout in a shallow irrigation ditch. I threw a wide variety of nymphs and dry flies, but with no success; apparently with sex on the brain the rainbows wanted nothing to do with me. Without much (read any) action, Katie sat on the bank and enjoyed her book while basking in the sun.
Dejected, we eventually started to make our way back to the car when I spotted a small rainbow take something off of the surface. I had not seen any bugs coming off the water so I went to my surface standby, a 16 Adams. Sure enough, I had a take on my first drift! Katie looked up in shock; I am pretty sure she thinks that I never actually catch anything. After a short battle, I landed the fish and had a picture. While the fish was obviously not huge, I was content with catching the only active fish I had seen all day.
[...] took out an 11′ Tenkara Iwana rod to the local trout infested irrigation ditch. With all the rain the water was a brilliant chocolate color and I spent most of my time playing [...]