I have come here to chew bubblegum and catch trout...

... and I'm all outta bubblegum.

Had trouble sleeping last night, like a kid before Christmas.  I'd been waiting for this day for weeks now. Visions of the giant trout from last year were swimming in my head.

Got to the Hooked on fishing pond right at 10am.  There were already 4-5 guys out there whipping a fly around.  I walked over to Jonn and said hello and then got down to business.

I had a brown woolly bugger with a bead on the head tied on for most of the day.  A few casts in I got my first bite:

Not exactly what I was expecting.  Caught two of these hand sized hybrids.

I let him go and moved down to a little inlet where we were tearing them up last fall.  After a few casts, Clif got there and we watched as a guy caught a few on nymphs.

Shortly thereafter, I hooked up:

That's more like it.

A few more casts and I hooked something huge.  It took off, making my reel SCREAM.  I don't want to say too much about the fight because Clif taped it and if he uploads it and I ask nice, maybe he'll let me put the vid in here later to tell the story.

After that, something possessed me to give up my honey hole by the inlet and move down the bank.  (I shouldn't have.  The guy who moved into that spot really tore into them later in the day, hooking a couple big ones that Clif has footage of.  Oh well, I gave it up fair and square.)

After moving down the bank, I managed to hook another one.  It seemed like at least half of my fish were on when I paused my stripping for a few seconds.  (usually when distra- squirrel!)  I would strip again, feel a weight on the line and set the hook.  Maybe I need to be using an indicator next time and do less stripping?  Anyway, here's the one I hooked down the bank:

Sorry bout the finger.  I'm not the most coordinated guy when I'm just standing still, let alone fighting a fish and taking a picture at the same time.

Didn't have anybody nearby with a net so I just pulled it up to the bank, snapped a pic and set her loose.

I moved back down towards my honey hole and the guy who had moved into it (name was Brian, seemed like a nice guy) and I took turns catching fish and netting them for each other.  Not intentionally, it just seemed to work out that way.  Here's my two out of the rotation:

I believe this net starts at zero in the middle and goes out on both sides (correct me if I'm wrong Clif) so this one is 17-18".

My biggest of the day.  Can't really tell because of the goofy pose but she was THICK.   This is the only way I could get ahold of her well enough for a pic.

These were all by about 1ish.  After that, my day tapered off.  It could have been that as it warmed up they wanted bigger offerings and the biggest thing I had was the woolly bugger I had been using all day.  Brian tied on a crawfish pattern, was just tossing it out and letting it sit on the bottom and was tearing them up for awhile.  He had a couple monster fish that got off and had a run where he had bites on like 5 out of 6 casts.  I'm for sure gonna pick up some crawfish flies.  I'm sure they'll come in handy on bass in between Hooked on Fishing park events.

So that was pretty much my day.  Fishing wasn't quite as hot as it was last fall (still probably the best fishing I'll experience all year) but I was happy to make a donation to a good cause in exchange for some good fishing and I'd be happy to do it again.