Redemption

If you haven’t been fishing, you’re not missing much. The waters are very high and very cold. For some rivers that have been stocked, I hear that the action has been non-existent. I wonder if the “first round” stocking has been meager as the trucks dash from spot to spot in a frenzy.

I’m eager for spring fishing, which is why I awoke at 3:30 am, checked the water gauges, momentarily lapsed back to the rational world, and read until 5:30 am. Then, it was time to get the show on the road.

I loaded five fly roads into the car, as I didn’t know how I wanted to fish and ended up doing a little bit of this and that: bobber nymphing on the four-weight, tightlining with the Thomas and Thomas Contact II, and throwing articulated streamers on the seven-weight (that made no sense, naturally).

By lunch, I was freezing, hungry, and feeling pretty disappointed. All that work and not even a single take. To boot, I was getting a horrible headache to the point where I was feeling nauseous. I’ve never had a migraine, and I wonder if I’m due.

I decided to hit “one last” spot, hoping against hope. And, wouldn’t you know it, but the sighter paused slightly, and I felt a bump on the all-mono rig during a decent midge hatch. A short while later, a very feisty brown hit the net.

The fish taped a little over 15″ and fought like something bigger. I think my mind can play tricks like that as I milked the “fish on” experience as much as possible.

Suddenly, the headache was gone, I felt energized, and decided to keep fishing. I ended up working more water for another three hours in the cold rain and had just one other grab from a fish that mysteriously popped off.

At least, today was a bit of redemption after last week’s skunking. And, I arrived home just as two trays of homemade chocolate chip cookies came out of the oven.

There were barely any anglers out. The sane people were home.

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2 thoughts on “Redemption

  1. Yes, I too have been itching to get out and drown a fly or two but held off.. I ended up cleaning up the area that needed straightening up where I sit and tie flies. Then, sat and tied a few bead head turkey tails, Checked out some DIY on trout bitten about adding traction bar cleats to my Korker Vibram rubber soles. Its suppose to rain most of the week, so rainy day/week activities for me until it dries up a bit. Nice to hear you got out though.

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