Casting With Either Hand

As I was shutting the door Brent was standing by the boat casting. I commented to Rhonda that Brent had a nice cast and I also noted he's a lefty. With that we set up the shuttle for the next trip and it was time to get on the river. Brent and I skipped fishing the first part of the float while we discussed fishing from the drift boat. We were on the same page until Brent stood up and made his first cast with his right hand. Somewhat confused I waited a few more casts and said "I thought I saw you casting with your left hand earlier?" Brent said I probably did see that, but he could cast with either hand. I commented on how people like that really pi are few and far between and he said it opens up a lot of opportunity. See most people would just be jealous... 

We Picked Up a Bunch of These

Our plan for the day was to fish nymphs deep and then fish streamers where it seemed appropriate. There is a mud bank,early in the float, that has a slight current. There are almost always fish holding there waiting for a slow moving meal. This little nugget is a good place to judge an angler's drift and of course an opportunity to exam mending skills. Brent has both a good mend and clean drift. We sent a nymph down the lane and Brent popped a couple fish that were waiting at the drive-thru. 

The morning was fairly consistent. The difference between this day and a "normal" day was the fish were apparently holding in schools on this day. Or possibly they were just a little tighter to current than usual. Where we would pick up one fish we would boat two and sometimes three on this trip. That ran the numbers higher but there were some slower periods to deal with too.

Brent could cast well and was open to recommendations. We made our into some of the better streamer water and pulled out the streamer rod. We tried several different patterns as well as retrieves and finally landed on a Louisiana Toad Fly. That's right a saltwater fly that works on Louisiana red fish can also be effective on Tennessee brown trout. Color is always important and we tried a couple variations of color as well. We boated this brown just as I was reaching into the streamer box to get the next color on the chart. The next color didn't come out until well after lunch.

We stopped for lunch and slowed the day down just a little more. It was a nice to be outside. Although there was just a little more wind than we wanted. The temps more than made up for the wind and we took advantage of an early Tennessee spring like day. We wound down the day with good numbers and a couple nice fish to top things off. When the day was done Brent's left and right hand casting did open up a lot of opportunity.