Little Fish

While awake, I dreamt I was in Montana today...I was alone, in the evening, wetwading, fishing dries to wild trout...using one of two size 18 purple haze dries I still have from my last trip there...I can still remember the shop we got them in...a beat up hole in the wall on the way to the Big Hole. Caught a grayling - my first - on one of these flies there on that river. This evening I snuck up to crystal clear, cold, trouty looking water, way around the runs and holes, in the bushes, slowly behind a large fallen tree...cast up with one false cast, over the log into a nice drift along the deeper run on the opposite side of the creek. A few drifts later and a missed strike or two and then I had a fish on. Here's where I wake up...in spite of the 00wt rod and 8x tippet, the fish is still painfully small. 8" maybe. Indeed, the second one I caught was, literally, the smallest trout I have ever caught. A beautiful, healthy, wild brook trout, but...