Photo of the Day: Brown’s Battenkill Brown

The Hendricksons are hatching on the Battenkill, bringing big trout to the surface.
photo by Shawn Combs

A finance analyst, Sam Brown isn’t in the Rod & Tackle department here at Orvis, but he obviously knows how to wield a fly rod (aside from being the current office 40-yard dash champion). He took this fine brown trout last night on the Battenkill, while floating a New York stretch with rod designer Shawn Combs and casting instructor Pete Kutzer. Here’s his story:

I was floating with Pete and Shawn in Shawn’s drift boat. There were super-thick clouds of caddisflies, with some Hendrickson duns in there, as well. The fish were just eating the duns, though.
We came across a nice cutbank with consistently feeding fish, so we parked the boat. Pete and Shawn each got good fish, while I struggled a bit. I missed two on the near-side seam and got a lot of crap from Pete and Shawn before I finally got this guy on a Light Hendrickson. I just sat in the back of the boat the rest of the trip and drank beers.

Sounds like a little healthy competition to me. We’ll wait to see what Pete and Shawn’s fish looked like, but Sam’s is pretty sweet.