What a difference a day makes. 

Epic day. By far the best day of fishing yet. Yesterday, nothing. Today, everything. 

Day started off with clear, hot skies. I decided to only fish conventional today, and was glad I did. Up to now I had been fly only.

Started off tossing the whopper plopper on a small baitcaster. Based off my Boundary Waters and Illinois fishing, I had confidence in the plopper and was rewarded right away with an 11lb peacock exploding on the top water. First thing. My biggest peacock of the trip. 

I stayed with the whopper plopper and caught a few more smaller fish before things slowed down. After working a hole for some time with the plopper, our indigenous guide Lavide told me to try the weighted jig. It is essentially a heavily weighted hair jig with red hair on the top and yellow with flash on the bottom.

Cast it out to the same spot I had been working with the whopper plopper and BOOM! 12lb peacock. This would come to be the biggest of the trip. 

I stayed with the jig for much of the rest of the day and nailed em. 10 peacocks (two 12lbers, an 11, a few 10s and multiple 8s). 

One of the high and low moments was our afternoon cat fishing. With piranha cut bait on a massive Kahle hook we tossed out our line in some deep slow moving water. 

About 40 minutes in Garry's rod bent over and nearly flew out of the boat and into the river. Garry hammered him with a solid hook set and this monster took off like a freight train. At 75 years old, Garry didn’t stand a chance fighting this monster, and I ran over and tightened the drag as the thing was taking line like nobodys business. For a moment in the back of my head I thought there was a real possibility that fish was going to pull Garry in with it. 

With our guide yelling “Pusha, Pusha” (pull it, pull it!) 

Garry handed the rod off to me - there was no chance he was gonna fight that thing in. 

As I took the rod the thing was screaming line. I hit him with a few jerks and reel downs, but stood no chance. That loch ness monster was going wherever he wanted, 100lb braid and 250lb leader be damned. 

After fighting him for around 5 minutes, he was off just as quick as he was on. Nooo!

We looked at the line and found that the 250lb steel leader had snapped clean. The monster was gone. 

We cat fished for another two hours with no luck before fishing our way back up river toward camp. At one point Garry and I doubled up with nice 8lb fish each. 

We ended the day with double digit fish and stories for the dinner table about the loch ness monster that could have been. 

Great day. Last day of fishing tomorrow. 

Peacocks & Catfish here we come.