Four Springs Report Friday 5th November

I was going to go to Lake Leake this morning but the lure of a sleep in,( on top of listening to recent President reports re /Four Springs fly fishing), had me change my mind.
So with that, I picked up fellow President John Dekkers at 9.30am and we were on our way.
We hadn't been on the water for very long when we noticed a couple of swirls near the boat, a quick cast in that direction saw my indicator fly sink, I struck ...and all hell broke loose!!!.

Instantly all my fly line disappeared, along with 40 meters of backing and the freight train I had just hooked showed no sign of easing up.!!!!
Johnny instantly wound in his line ,engaged the electric motor and put us in "hot pursuit" of the leviathan we had just snagged.
Over a period of what seemed an eternity and inch by inch, we regained some of the lost line, it was about ten minutes in when it decided to jump, it was a big fish...a very big fish , suprisingly it was also a brown, we thought only rainbows did this stuff!!
Two more jumps, and it was on top consistently, it's fins cutting through the "glasslike" water....it was starting to slow down,but it was still about 25 meters away from the boat though.
Then it happened, that horrible feeling.....the line went slack, the rod stopped flexing and the dark shadow slunk back down into the depths.
 I said to John as I bit my lip and wound in the line,(fly's still attached) , "the hook's pulled mate".
 "He's gone?"...."Bulls%&t".... said John.
"No mate", "he's gone" I said.
We sat in the boat looking at each other in"stunned silence".
Now it must be said, I don't usually care if I lose fish, but this one hurt,.... it really did hurt.
I have never had anything like that on the end of a fly rod in my life and know only too well that experiences like that don't happen too often, this is the first time I had been taken to the flyline backing like that in all my years of fly fishing.
My biggest ever fish on a fly before this was a 6 pounder out of Penstock caught 5 or six years ago....it looked like it would be a while yet before I broke that record.
It wasn't.
About an hour later ,another boil, another cast, but this time instead of watching my indicator fly sink, I watched as a big black shape came up from the depths and slowly but confidently engulfed my sight fly ( a brown Kinkhammer), I tightened, a large splash, followed by a short but very strong runs.
As we looked into the water, we could see this was another big fish.
Please don't get off, I thought,as it slugged it out underneath the boat,it's runs progressively getting shorter and shorter with seemingly less power....(I only had six pound tippet on the line!!!).
Then, all of a sudden as if to just give up, it turned around and sluggishly swam into the waiting net that John had in his hand.
I swear I held my breath as he lifted.!!!
A cheer broke out, handshakes all round, the scales were produced....6.5 pounds, my biggest ever fish on a fly.
Our day had just got a whole lot brighter again!!!
We missed a couple more and Johnny had a nice one on that pulled the hooks, but all in all, our chances were few and far between, not many duns about today at all.
So to sum up, whilst not a fruitful day in terms of bags of fish caught,...it was still a day that will live in our memories for years to come.
I don't know who enjoyed themselves the most, myself for breaking my "personal best record", or Johnny ...who was so excited for me.
As he said, "you don't experience what we did today too often!!"
It was indeed a great day.

regards, Todd