Visiting The Mothership ~ Sunday Tippets, Damsel Style

Last July, I took a friend from Pennsylvania fishing.  If you remember, it was a "Smoky and the Bandit" adventure...  Yes, Mike "Troutrageous" had his own version of the story too.   Ham's Fork, Wyoming was the location.  The fishing was active.  Lots of smaller fish, as the water level was on the low side.  So, I have wondered the last few weeks if I should venture up there again, but earlier.   I called a fly shop with knowledge of the Ham's Fork of the Green River.  150 cfs and fishing well.  YUP... It was ON!

I invited my buddy, Maynard, to go along as it is a 2 to 2 1/2 hr trip and times flies by faster when you have a traveling partner.  So, we headed out early and made good time.  There she was, the J.C. Penney Mothership.  Yup, back in 1902... James C. Penney journeyed out to Kemmerer, Wy. to start a little business.  The rest is history...

If you have a thing for historic sites and museums, you might like to read about it HERE...  It is actually quite the story.

When we arrived, there was a crowd gathered at the Kemmerer Community Pond. Turned out to be a Youth Fishing Derby...  Oh good!  That would
 mean that the river out of town should be relatively empty.
(Except for a few UTAH license plates!)

So, we ventured up to the dam spillway and walked a mile downstream.  

Those stinkin'

Long Distance Releases...

With a few rainbows in between...

My LDR's though, were in mass number and I was wondering if I would ever keep one on the hook!  Several fish were on for a few minutes with me reeling, letting the fish run, bringing them back... and then GONE.  Maynard even said that he was ready to take a picture of me with a bent rod instead.  It just didn't look like a fish was going to make it to the net!  I won't claim that this was the difference or not.  But, when I woke up and went through my gear, I realized that I was out of a 4x tippet.  So, I ran down to WALMART (I can't believe that I actually did this because of one post that I made fun of their fishing dept) and lo and behold... found the FAIRPLAY by Cortland tippet hanging on the wall of mostly lures and bait hooks.  I had been using this brittle tippet all morning.  

Good Grief, Maynard... Take the picture!!!

~Sunday Tippet ~

This fish came after I cut off my Walmart bought tippet and added my usual RIO  3x tippet.  Whether it was the heavier tippet that helped, or the flexibility of the actual RIO tippet material... I don't know.  And maybe it was my shoddy way of  bringing in fish today.  And I finally got lucky!  
Final tally... FISH 7 RD  1.

Yup... it happens.  It's all part of the game.

Fish won this round.

But, I still had a marvelous day with a good friend and beautiful weather. 

 No complaints.  And guess what... I found new, deeper runs with even nicer fish that will be re-visited very soon.  = )