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Touched by Ray from God, Concord Angler Wanders Rivers

Fairfield, September 12, 2006

The guy with the ray of heavenly light through his brain is Jim Messer. The ray of light is piercing his brain and focused on his new 4-weight rod at the second set of power lines at Shawmut. The ray is always present through his head but can only be seen in photos. Jim has no explanation for what is shown in this photo but states that he's "never really felt any bad effects...."

Jim towed his skiff down to Fairfield from Concord, Sept. 12 leaving his home on the banks of the Kennebec where the wild Rainbows are to hunt stocked fish with me at Shawmut. We hoped to catch a Brown Trout. We never did.

We caught Rainbows, Bass and Chub....all on an emerger, BWO, or Adams. Jim and I share a love of sight fishing. In certain conditions, like many other anglers, we want only to cast to a rising fish. The hunt trains our eyes and long delicate casts to what sometimes turns into a hooked Chub or Bass are apart of the fun. "See a fish, hook a fish". Or, get yourself so stumped like we did on what a rising 13-inch Rainbow's feeding on, you wonder whether it's micro-drag, or the patterns' size, or color, or should I go to 6X?...WTF!?

September summer heat and sun were hanging on, slowing the surface activity and it wasn't until late in the day when we saw more bugs and more rising fish. I had casts over what looked like a holdover Trout of 20-inches or more who came up for 5 minutes to cut a swath through bugs in an eddy 20-feet away. One time we each landed a Trout on a single cast and once we had a double hookup. We caught a bunch of L.V. Rainbows who looked well fed, a few stout Bass who pulled harder, and Jim landed a mega Chub.

Both of us got our faces burnt to a crisp and when the sun finally got below the trees on the west side we were grateful. It cooled off quickly.