#opst commando head

Thirty-four degrees with forecasted 6-8 MPH winds, cloudy skies, and a chance of snow.  Not exactly conditions to be excited about, but given the last couple of visits to this particular shoreline, I figured it wouldn’t hurt to roll the dice.

First roll: A Puget Mini Slam--resident coho, little blackmouth, sea run cutthroat.  Pretty cool any time of year but especially motivating in the dead of winter.

Second roll: “We’re going to need a bigger net.”

USPS brought a gift on Friday: a brand new Sage Pulse 3110 trout switch.  I was curious to see how tried and true Graphite IIIe would translate to a trouty two hander and happened to be in need of something punchier than my 2109 ONE minus the $1,050 price tag.  

It arrived just in time, too.  The wind forecast today was anywhere between 7 and 11 mph.  Naturally, it would be blowing in the opposite direction of the tide.  Appropriate test conditions for the new stick.

31 degrees yesterday morning, but went fishing anyway.  Managed to scratch out one fish before calling it and getting back to the vise.  I’m not sure if I’m just getting old or if I’m losing my one-man war against domestication.

It’s like that opening scene in Gladiator when Quintus says, “People should know when they’re conquered.”

Then Maximus replies, “Would you know, Quintus?  Would I?”

The forecast this morning predicted a 3-4 hour window of relatively calm conditions so I rolled the dice and dedicated today’s session to working with an OPST Commando head on a single hand 5 weight.  I looped a 10 foot poly onto a 200 grain head and, just to satisfy my curiosity, paired it with a blast from graphite’s past: a Sage 590-2 DS.  Could a set of new tires breathe life back into a member of the (honorable) mothball quiver?

This handful of test subjects would say, “Yes.”

Mind you, they didn’t make it easy.  Conditions for the first hour and a half necessitated Pokes and inline Snap-T’s to get the job done, after which things opened up enough for an overhead approach.  As advertised, the Commando did it all.

Finally found some time to knock the rust off.  It was shaky at first–the water was dirty, clouds obscured the sunrise and the now-familiar routine of being a father made it challenging to resist the thoughts of jumping back in the car and heading home.

Then a jumper rescued me from my pity party.  My eyes refocused on everything in front of me.  A boil. A rip.  Clouds parted and…was that the sun?

Why, yes it was, and it happened to be lighting up the immediate future.