I thought, If I'm ever going to have the perfect fishing partner, I better start training him now. Bishop is my ten month old Irish Setter. He's full of vigor, to put it mildly, but all the hours of training are starting to pay off. Today I took Bishop to the Blanco River for some exercise and some fishing. The last time I attempted fishing with him was a small disaster. I had a feeling that this time would be different, and it was. As for the day's fishing program, I knew that I was going to be concentrating my efforts on a certain large pool of the river, so I brought 4 different rods to fish with (G. Loomis Escape series ultra light spin, St. Croix Avid-Micro light spin, TFO Finesse Series 1 wt., and G. Loomis GLX 6 wt.). To make a long story shorter, all rods got a little action. I threw a white deer hair diver and some small foam bugs on the fly rods, and some small jigs and bass assassins on the spinning rods.
I had a good day on the water, but Bishop might argue that he had a better one. He ran, jumped, and swam for the first four hours straight. He chewed on sticks and an old deer jaw bone that he dug up. He even found some goose droppings and a turkey vulture carcass to roll on. That stuff got washed off after a while. He was most intrigued by the fish. There was not a fish brought to shore that Bishop didn't greet first. You can see his big paw in the photo above. He wanted to be in the water in front of me at all times, which made things a little challenging. For instance, he got tangled in my fly line a few times, I hooked him once, he spooked some good fish, and he knocked off a huge bluegill that I wanted a photo of first. Well, you can't have everything, and yet another reason to use barbless hooks!
Thanks partner. We'll get out again soon.
