Rufus Woods, Some days…You eat the bear and other days the bear eats you or should I say the "FISH" eats you. Last week my wife decided that four months of remodeling our new home plus working fulltime without a day off was getting to me and suggested that I take a day off and go fishing. I immediately started planning my RW trip. Weather report, check. I was going rain or shine, hurricane or typhoon. Get boat and truck gas, check. Pre-rig five fishing rods, check. Manage a trip to the tackle shop to see if there was anything new that I didn’t have, check. At 5:30 am Sunday morning I was welcomed to the highway by two inches of slush with heavy rain and snow falling. That was fine…I thought, I’ll just take it easy and I’ll be OK. I arrived at the Corps boat launch at 7:00 am and was greeted by low over cast clouds and fog with water that looked like glass, “NO” rain with a water temp of 36.6 degrees. I thought to myself…Today is going to be a great day. I launched my boat and immediately headed for the lower pens. Upon arrival I trolled a black woolly bugger wiggle fin combo. I trolled the lower pens for about an hour without success so I decided to head for the middle pens. I arrived at the middle pens and spent about an hour casting a black super rooster tail towards the shore below the pens without success so I decided to head for the upper pens. After reading all of the Rufus Woods upper pen reports this last couple of months I just knew today was going to be my day. I dropped anchor between the pens and the shore and began fly casting a woolly bugger. “Nothing” so I switched over to my Rufus Woods Trout Pellet Fly and after about 10,000 casts I was rewarded with what I thought was a snag close to the shore. I let out some anchor line hoping that I could free said snag and was rewarded with a series of very large head shakes. With my six weight fly rod I commenced to do battle with the beast. He fought for what seemed like an eternity and finally knowing he was defeated by my unparalleled skills as an angler he rolled onto his side took one final breath and gave up…or so I thought. Turns out he had a surprise in store for me. Just as I was lowering my net he gave a small twitch causing me to misjudge my aim and he was free. He stopped, turned towards me and I swear he winked. He would have been my personal best on a fly rod for Rufus Woods and I’m sure he easily weighed all of ten or eleven pounds. As I was motoring back towards the boat launch I discovered that spitting my hook was not the end of my battle with the leviathan. As I was leaving the area of the upper pens I’m sure he put a hex on my boat motor. About the time I reached lone pine island my motor died. I checked everything and no matter what I tried I couldn’t get it started. I made the last fifteen miles of the trip to the launch on my 8hp kicker in a heavy rain. Soaked to the bone I made it in just over two hours. So…To you Mr. Fish, I say you may have won the battle but you didn’t win the war. I’ll be back…
