Penn's On 5/4/2022

Penn's was in really fine shape, down just enough to wade to the spots that I love to hunt the bigger boys. I watched PA. Woods and Water video on YouTube the other night as he fished in the area where the swining bridge at the Herndon Rod & Gun Club was and he noted the amount of Brook Trout he was catching? I spend a good amount of time talking to Dr. Lewis before gearing up and walking down to the stream to see trout up on "tan caddis" well it was time for Dave McPhali's bubble back caddis pattern in a size #16 to a great result, large chubs, smallmouth's and trout of various sizes and of course "Brook Trout" and they looked to be of stocking size and they were all the same, I had a hell of a time trying to handle them, it seemed to me that they were very slippery, more so than the brown trout. As the night moved on I saw some Grey Fox duns appear as I was drinking a shot of hot coffee. OK time to change to a GF emerger but first check that my 5X tippet material was in good order. Just watched to find the better guys and located one near me without a long cast, on the second float he came up and sipped it in, set the hook and a few bulldog tugs and he was gone, oh well. Made sure I dried the fly off and located another and waited till he took a few duns before casting to him, this time it took at least 5 good drifts before he came up and ate BUT the same bulldog head shake and a short run and GONE. This thime I looked at my hook and sure enough it was bent out, the hook gap opened, said some bad words and clipped it off and tied another on. Well the same thing happened again and again on really good fish. My Grey Fox emergers were tie on the STUPID Firehole 315 Competition Numph/Stone/Kink hooks, this is the same manf. that I bitched about before that their hook gaps opened up!!!! No sense in telling them about it because he just made an excuse about the 419's, I have quite a few of their hooks left and will NEVER again use them for anything. To loose good fish for some thing that stupid, inferior temper on a hook is bad business. Yes I had some trouble with Tiemco hooks on the Missouri before but it was my mistake in using a thinner hook with 4x leader because of the power the rainbows have when they take a fly there. The other night has no business happening, of course I only had a few flies on Tiemco hooks and they held on more fish. Lesson learned stay with what works well. I do try every year to tie new and improved patterns using newer materials and better color combo's and that's why I had them tied on what I thougt were good hooks. It was apperent that the evening was not going to developed into a banner hatch and the spinners were really high in the trees so I called it quits at 6:45, had a lot of fun and bitched all the way home about the shitty hooks- stick with Tiemco or Daiichi and be happy.