East & West Doubleheader...& A New Lucky Feather?

Yesterday morning morning started in extreme emergency mode...practically DEFCON 2...let me explain.

Remember that post I wrote about my lucky fishing hat a few months ago?  Well it's MIA.  I looked high, I looked low, and I just couldn't find it.  May need to get a hold of John Rambo to go retrieve it.  It will surely turn up (likely in the bottom of Lilly's toy box), but yesterday morning it posed quite a dilemma as I hadn't gone fishing in a month and didn't want to suffer the skunk due to improper headwear.  I mean Dumbo couldn't fly without his feather...or could he...?

So to compensate, I grabbed an old random Mossy Oak hat for the noggin, but tossed on my new Arizona Wanderings tee (from the blog of the same name) in hopes I would bring some luck.  Ben doesn't ever seem to have bad days on the water, and it had to work for me...at least until my new Orvis Trout Bum hat & tee arrive in the mail...

When there's a "AZW Spotting" contest, consider this the first entry...grrrr...

The first part of the morning I decided to fish some tenkara...well, because that's what I do.  The Sakura rods long gone and returned to their master, I fished my Tenkara USA Iwana with a black foam ant indicator fly and a red beadhead prince nymph drifting below.  Yeah, I know...no kebaris...but I don't always roll old school.  Evidently neither do the trout, as I was able to pick off a few browns below the white covered bridge and well as a few more upstream drifting the flies near rootballs.

After fishing tenkara for about 2 or 3 hours, I went back to the Forester, collapsed the Iwana, and grabbed the "big boy" fly rod, aka my Redington Classic Trout 3-wt. Despite the rumors, I actually do fish with a reel sometimes. I was sent a furled leader by Nick from FoulHook to field test in early May, and I felt bad about not getting it wet to date.

I like the way the leader behaved, even did the "get caught in a tree, pull too hard, and the whole thing collapses in a jumble" test, and it passed without flaw, untangling itself quickly & easily.  Even after that minor misahp, the trout were still in a cooperative mood.

Action like that made the walk back to the car to head home for lunch quite enjoyable. Even allowed some time to take in the surroundings.

Obligatory fungus...

...and flower pictures.

In the end, was a very fun morning of fishing; asking for anything more would have been greedy.