I love reading these types of posts. Charlie, you have some absolute monsters from this year, thanks for sharing.
For me, 3 fish stand out from this year, plus a few day trips.
One of my goals (the only one that I specifically remember setting last year) was to break the 24" mark on the fly. I was able to make that happen twice in the span of a week in September. The first fish was an absolute freak - I was fishing a small, mountain brown trout stream that I know holds some big browns, and even though the water was low, it was still cold in mid September. I know that the big browns here have a habit of hiding under big rock ledges and ambushing streamers, but most trips I am lucky if I even move one of these big guys. They sleep a lot. So there I was standing at the tail of one of the deepest spots on the stream at 2:00 p.m on a bright sunny day, fully expecting all of the big fish to be asleep in those conditions, but just trying my usual streamer plunking tactic anyway because you never know. On the second cast, "you never know" happened, I felt a very heavy fish grab the fly. Due to a glare I never saw the fish until I got it close a few minutes later and then my jaw just dropped, it was the biggest brown I've ever seen in person. I was able to land it and grab a few photos and used a 6" pair of pliers as a ruler to estimate it's length at 25". I couldn't believe a wild brown trout was my first 24"+ fish on a fly - I thought it would be a carp or catfish. This was easily my top fish of 2016, and biggest trout ever.
The next weekend, I tried muskie fishing for the first time. I was invited to do a tournament about a month later with some guys who know what they're doing, so we headed up to scout the tournament water (Allegheny River near Warren, PA) ahead of time. I did not encounter any muskies, but I did catch a nice pike in the 25-27" range, which now stands as my biggest fly caught fish. During the actual tournament, we got skunked, but I finally saw my first muskie ever (it was under 24" but viciously attacked a 10" long fly - unfortunately not the part with the hook).
The third fish that really sticks in my memory was a redfish I caught in Florida during a short trip I made there in early March. My friend and I rented kayaks and were fishing a small mangrove-lined tidal creek on a strong incoming tide. I hooked into this redfish, and between trying to control the line and avoid the tree branches with my rod tip, I had no control over the kayak. The tide was pushing me quickly up the creek so my friend had to paddle over, grab the back of my kayak with one hand and a mangrove with the other, and finally I could stay in one place and finish fighting the fish. The whole ordeal probably took about 10 minutes, and the reward was a 20-21" redfish, which isn't huge but turned out to be the biggest fish I caught in Florida.
Overall, it was a down year for trout for me - mostly due to the low summer and fall flows and partially because I moved from Ashburn to Tysons in early June, so I was apartment hunting during most of the prime trout days in May. Catching that one beast brown makes up for that though, and I also added two more MD brown trout streams to my regular "rotation". Flows were low by the time I discovered them so they haven't produced much yet, but both have very solid wild brown trout populations. Hopefully I can crack their codes in 2017. I made some new friends this year via brookie fishing, always a great time!
Had a good time with the shad run as usual. I had difficulty on the days where I went myself, but fortunately on the two occasions where I invited people down we had good fishing. I was able to get a friend and my dad hooked up with their first shad on a fly, both loved the experience. As for stripers, I'll have to wait until 2017 to figure out how the heck to catch one over 12".
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