Big Fish Day On The Arkansas River 05Dec22

I caught a very nice 22" slab male cutbow today; it was probably near 5# as my hand only went halfway around. I fooled him on the weight, a barbless #18 jig-tied silver tung bead electric perdigon-like nymph. It was a nice 60° day, despite the wind and partial clouds, on the Arkansas River tailwater out of Nature Center. I was on the water by 9:45am but the "real" action was a bit slow till ~11am. Fortunately now the visibility is improving some ~ it is still hard to see the bigs but viz is >2ft, just not complete. I saw very few hatching bugs today, the wind likely held them down some, as might've the flows rising 12% to 77cfs, but still I saw a minuscule fall baetis hatch and some more tiny grey midges. I caught a half doz in 3 hours but the bigs were late in that timeframe. I also fooled a decent 18" male on my Destiny's Child tie... so some fall baetis feeding. Others took Pop Top or Awesome midges. There were quite a few folks so I only fished from the big weir through the farm to the hook weir before heading home. It was serendipity mostly that had me rig up the Rodfather Stripper (EPIC graphene 9ft 6.5wt 4pc) with Orvis Mirage III reel loaded with WF6F today and fight the nicest cutbow very effectively in 5 min ~ I was really just wanting to see how it cast in the gusty wind in time for our NZ fishing. Yeah... gr8 rod experienced a gr8 fish; the larger fighting butt was useful lodged into my forearm ~ I will have to decide whether to take the Orvis 7wt line or the SA 6wt to NZ, which scored today (but was frankly a little light in the wind on this rod). Colorado is so awesome ~ I'm gonna have to update "Best Fish of '22" entry with this boy. Celebration brew is the fine Cerebral Anniversary IPA with nectron, citra, & strata hops.