Luck of the Kiwi?

It's not my intention that this become a blog just about my fishing experiences, but...

My parents recently (within the past year or so) had a journey to New Zealand with some friends of theirs. On returning, they brought me quite possibly the best gift that they could have brought me from New Zealand...a greenstone fish hook. I didn't realize it at the time, but there's a bit of tradition with these necklaces in that it is VERY bad form to buy one for yourself...kind of a like giving yourself a nickname! The fish hook itself represents prosperity and safe-keeping over the water. It's a bit of a fisherman's guardian angel.

Since receiving it, I feel like I've been having a bit of good luck in the trout-catching department. Yesterday's outing was definitely one to make me even more convinced.

I was done at school by 12:30pm yesterday because of the academic festival we're having instead of normal classes this week. I ate lunch, talked with Kel for a bit, and then went down to the Rio Gallinas...about 5 min. from my house. I only fished for an hour, but in that time, caught 4 trout worth mentioning...2 of which were over 16 inches each! These are some of the biggest that I've caught yet. The weather was perfect...high 70's and low humidity...sun shining...and the bugs were out, which was making the trout rise. I caught a brown trout on a store-bought stimulator caddis fly with an orange tail...he was enormous feeling on the end of my light-weight fly rod. After that I decided to try one of my home-tied caddis stimulators just to see if they'd hit it...and that's when I caught the biggest fish yet...a deep bronze-colored German brown trout. He hit the caddis upstream in a deep pocket and we fought for a good minute and a half as he tried to take the line under a clump of beaver-chewed river debris.

Good day fishing?...or luck of the Kiwi necklace? Either way, I'm happy to be fishing in New Mexico!

cheers,
jeff