The Community Classic - Week 1
I’m happy to say that the Community Classic 2024 has officially launched! I’ll be posting short recaps every week or so to go over the highlights. You see the full standings by clicking the button below.
Christian, Grady and I were off to the races this past weekend as we headed south to Rhode Island for the illustrious Trout Day (or Opening Day, to the layman). We were all pretty pumped to get in on some early, consistent fly fishing action. Unfortunately, we were unceremoniously greeted with one of the worst trout days in recent history. Maybe it was of the death of the late great OJ Simpson that caused the fishing to suck, or perhaps the escalating tension between Isreal and Iran played a part. Whatever the reason, we couldn’t buy a bite except during very specific bite windows.
Christian had the worst luck of the bunch, catching a grand total of zero trout. I won’t dwell on this one; we already heckled him enough. Besides, I didn’t fair much better. I caught a single big beautiful golden rainbow trout over the whole weekend. Unfortunately, it doesn’t count for shit because golden bows aren’t a real species. I guess I could’ve measured it in as a rainbow, but I decided to let the first one go for good luck. I also lost an absolute hog of a rainbow after it nearly spooled me twice - it dove under a tree branch and snapped me off. Rats.
Meanwhile, Grady caught about 7 trout over the whole weekend, 3 or 4 of which were during a single bite window on Saturday afternoon. I was busy helping him take photos, so I wasn’t able to capitalize on that window. He managed to snag biggest brown at 17.5in, as well as biggest rainbow at a whopping 20 in.
Grady’s hog, uncensored. Bad photo, but I can attest to the length, so it’s a valid catch as per tournament guidelines.
Over in Pennsylvania, Declan hammered on crappie until his arms were sore. He managed to catch both the largest and second largest crappie of the tournament thus far. Unfortunately, both fish were thrown out because he didn’t measure them with a tape. Better luck next time, Dec!
Declan’s “first place” crappie.
Chase and Breen have laid dormant for the first week of the tourny, biding their time and preparing, I suppose. This weekend, Breen and I are going to check out a few local ponds around greater Boston, which have been recently stocked (or so I’ve heard). I’ll probably bounce on over to the Nissitissit River too - I’ve never checked it out, but I have some good intel that there are huge bows there. ‘Till next time,
Max
