Palomino Caddis

There I was, standing in the river parking lot at sunset, shaking my head while frantically rummaging through my gear bag. Rod – check. Waders, boots – check and check. Flies, leader, tippet, floatant, and nippers – check x5. Reel and fly-line, ummm, uhh, S*%@!!... no-check.
There were only a few options at this point. Whine andhave my buddy who brought all of his gear take me all theway home, which isn’t really an option, or figure something out. A quick inventory of the gear bag and a few minutes later I was all rigged and ready to go. I tied a knot at the reel seat and strung my rod with 12-ish feet of 25lb maxima. On the end of the mono I tied on a 9-foot leader and a few feet of tippet. Fly selection was a Palomino caddis tied by a good friend, Cheech.
I was limited in my fishing, as I couldn’t really cast. I waded out as deep as I could to the middle of a fast riffle section. My buddy was easily casting and fishing where ever he pleased. It was frustrating, at first.
I would do my best to haul, double haul, triple haul, water haul, any haul, to get the line past my rod tip, but with little success. Once I finally figure out how to hack the fly onto the water, I’d dance the Palomino caddis on the surface, skittering across the fast water… all the way into the mouths of willing fish. At first I was absolutely amazed I was able to get the fly out, let alone actually hook a fish, but many was a bit shocking at first. Landing the buggers was also entertaining and not very graceful. My fishing buddy didn’t have much success that night, even though he was efficiently mobile. Then it all made sense. I was standing in the middle of feeding fish during a caddis hatch with the right materials, the proper profile and with the appropriate action for the situation. I learned a few things that evening, one of which is location, location, fly-select-tion…and not to over fish while casting.