It was a crummy sort of day — chilly, mostly cloudy. I figured by early afternoon the water temperature might get up to the point where some bugs might start moving around, so I went over to the Blackberry River in East Canaan.

There was nobody at the big pool off Lower Road downstream of the bridge — the one where the spin and bait guys congregate.

This is unusual for a weekend. So I suited up and rigged up a three fly system of: Hendrickson dry up top; Hendrickson beadhead nymph in the middle; giant heavy woven green Czech thing on point.

All this on an old Orvis 8 foot 6 weight graphite. You can tell it’s old because that’s the model name: “Graphite.”

A long leader and some nifty wrist work allowed me to fling these things in such a way to achieve maximum dredging on the giant green thing, without sinking the dry.

Nothing happened and nothing happened some more, until something large and energetic took the GGT.

He ran one way. He ran the other way. Figuring he would spit out the barbless hook before I got him in the net, I took exciting photos of splashes with one hand while hanging on the the rod with the other.

I also noted the complete dearth of kibitizing nimrods who always seem to be around when I fall in or have to take a leak.

Finally I got this hawg in the net and snapped these not so hot pix before getting him back in the current. The fish was tired but got off under his own steam.

I estimate this bad boy at 25 inches long and 4 inches wide in the middle. He pretty much took up my large net. For reference, the GGT brought this 14-15 brown to net 100 yards upstream — normally a half-decent fish, but it seemed like a minnow compared to Mongo.