Graves Mountain Catch n' Pay

       BEFORE you judge me for fishing at a pay pond, let me explain that we did this just as a fun little afternoon present for my little brother's birthday, and we completely goofed off the whole time. We couldn't afford to actually go up there and use our best effort to catch fish. I could put my family into serious debt in about an hour! Anyways...Here is the story:

    Today we headed to the catch n' pay trout pond at graves mountain lodge... It is nearly $5/lb for trout there, so we were just going to mess around and catch maybe 2 or 3 per person (3 brothers) depending on the size of the fish. Ewing was burning a tiny blue lipless crank bait (like I said we were having fun with it) over a school of fish when a 3 or 4 pound rainbow smashed it. The fish decided to thrash around the whole way in and didn't really fight, but that is what sometimes happens with lazy stocked fish. While he was landing that fish, I spotted a lone Palamino ("golden" trout) swimming by the bank. I had brought my spinning outfit with a trout magnet specifically for this, because although I am good with a fly rod, I needed to have surgical precision to catch one and not a regular rainbow. I got the fish to eat and after 3 jumps, I brought it to the bank and landed it. Now that I had gotten that out of the way, I could play with my 3 weight. I tied up a #20 bead head zebra midge, and gave the rod to Ewing. I figured with such a tiny hook, he could definitely lose one during the fight which is GREAT for the pay pond. However, fish will be fish and he hooked the first fish that hit perfectly in the jaw and even though he did a mediocre job of fighting it (purposefully), it stayed hooked. Anywhere that you actually wanted to catch the fish, you would miss it on the hookset and if you didn't, no matter how well you played the fish, it would come off. I changed it to a #22 BWO dry and loaded it up with some "Gink". As I expected, I hooked the first fish that hit right in the jaw and it stayed hooked the whole time! That's how things work in this world of fishing though. My brother Wyatt also landed two rainbows, one hit when he was after a palamino, and another on the fly rod. We had a great time in such a relaxed fishing environment when there are 100s of fat hungry fish in the pond, and they aren't going anywhere, so there is no pressure, and messing up and losing a fish is good! We left with 6 fish for just under $50, so this is definitely not something we will do often, maybe once a year, but it is definitely a blast. I will be making a separate post with all of the pictures we took later on tonight or tomorrow. Thanks for reading!