Tinker:
I'm an avid trout catcher. I like standing alongside - or in - a fine little river catching trouts. There, I'm out of the closet: I'm a banksy, but I haven't been trout fishing all year.
You see, I have a thing about going to a river without bringing the dogs. Their idea of heaven includes splashing in a river and making me throw sticks for them to retrieve. How, then, could I go to a river without them?
But the Boys are the worst possible fishing companions. When we reach the bank of a creek, a stream, or a river, they run around shouting for me to "Find a stick!" "Here's a stick, now throw it, darn you!" and "Hey! Isn't that [my fishing pole] a stick in your hands? Throw it! Throw it!"
And if none of that works, they'll resort to their ever-popular if-we-sit-in-the-water-in-front-of-him-maybe-he'll-start-throwing-sticks strategy.
Fishing with the Boys is not fun, but on days when I'm not pretending I'm there to go fishing, it's a lot of fun watching them frolic. Thus, my quandary. They love rivers. I have fun watching them. How could I leave them at home? Especially when they'll smell river on me and sulk when I come home?
Yesterday I went without them. Trout season in my rivers ends on Halloween and with forecasts for real rain and wind until then, yesterday was the last day this year when I might have a shot at catching one of the mythical big rainbows in the river. There'd be no dogs allowed.
I told them, "Parker [the older pup] is in charge. Be good, stay out of jail, and don’t burn the place down while I'm gone" and off I went.
It's an unpleasant hike out to the spot I planned to fish. For part of the year, the big meadow is used as a cow pasture and you spend your time dodging the stuff cows leave behind and trying to not sprain an ankle in the deep divots they make in the ground. It's tricky business - trickier than it sounds.
When you get there, it's not the best place for fly-fishing. The bank is narrow, making a back-cast impossible (for me, anyway), and it's not wade-able because you arrive on the inside of a bend in the river, but nevertheless, the bank drops off steeply into water deeper than I am tall.
But I know this is where the biggest trout hang out. I've had many encounters with them over the years and this is the place. Not that I'm a trophy-fish kind of a guy, mind you. I get just as excited if I need a magnifying glass to tell I caught a fish and not a tadpole as I do if I catch something that's obviously a fish. If it was the last day for catching trout in 2022, I simply wanted to go fishing where there are fish worthy of the name.
I've learned to roll cast - a cast without a back-cast - just for this location, and I can shoot a line out a respectable distance with my roll casts. I even toyed with the idea of Spey-casting just for this spot until I learned one needs to stand in the river to make Spey-casts. Shucks.
I rigged two flies. A dry fly and a nymph. The dry fly acts like a bobber, the weighted nymph sinks below it. I don’t often fish a hopper-dropper rig but the last time I did, I scored a double. A tiny fish double, I admit, but a double is a double. They don’t depend on the size of the catch.
My first cast landed silently, but only made it to mid-stream. I needed another fifteen feet to reach where I expected to find fish. I hit my distance on the second cast, just as I heard a great splash upriver. Surely it was one of the truly mythical 20-inch trout I've heard about!
Nah. When I looked upstream, it was just an osprey rising out of the water, and he didn't have a 20-inch trout in his claws, just a common old 12-incher.
Have you ever noticed that you tend to catch fish when you aren't paying attention to fishing? I have. But hang me if I can't force myself to think about something else when I'm trying to pull off the Perfect Drift. It's darned hard to distract me, but the osprey managed it and I was still mumbling to myself about birds being allowed to catch bigger fish than me when my rod bent and stripped line shot out through my fingers.
Whatever I'd hooked was sizeable. "Ha, you old bird! Sucks to be you! I can do it better and I don’t even have wings!"
There's barely a current in that spot but my line was zipping out at an alarming rate, headed for a snag of big logs downstream. I don’t use the drag on my fly reels - it's only tight enough to prevent overruns when I pull off line to make a cast - and the line in my hand was above my half-finger glove's fingers and my fingers were starting to sting.
"A fish big enough to burn my fingers!" I might have shouted that instead of thinking it. I'm not sure which. But I was sure I needed to do something to keep that fish from reaching those logs, so I tightened the drag while simultaneously tightening my grip on the rod and the line.
It slowed the fish, which still hadn't shown itself, but it was still making headway towards the logs.
That's when I did the most curious thing I might ever have done while fishing and started trotting upstream, away from the fish. I have no idea what I thought it might accomplish - except get me to do something other than just stand there. And sure enough, it didn't do anything worthwhile except get me farther from my fish.
"Oh, if only I could wade out and get a better angle on this fish... I might be able to turn it."
Nope, the bank was still steep and water near the bank was still too deep to enter if I didn't want to swim - although thoughts of Brad Pitt sliding down a river to land a trout did pass through my thoughts.
The fish was almost at the logs. I gripped the line tighter until it stopped going out. Tears of frustration ran down my cheeks as I tried, in vain, to pull in line. I started walking ever so slowly towards the fish, always keeping the line taught while I pulled it in, hoping to get close enough to get an advantage on the fish.
Everything about fishing I’d ever learned, read about, or watched was racing through my head. Nothing came to mind about what to do in a situation like this, so I turned to wishful thinking.
"Oh, if only I'd brought the nine-weight rod instead of this wimpy five weight. Why don’t I own a six-weight? And why not a seven-weight? Why I could have all kinds of fun catching rockfish with a six- or seven-weight rod! And imagine what it would be like to hook a lingcod..."
Plainly, I'd disconnected from reality.
I was gaining ground if not gaining an advantage on the fish. I'd crept past where I'd hooked it and was close to the point where I might have a chance to turn it towards the bank...
And then it was over. The fish, whatever it had been, was gone and I’d never had a chance to see what it was. Maybe it was one of the holdover steelhead from the run earlier this year? Maybe it was a tuna - it stole line like a tuna would.
My line was intact, even the knots and the leader had survived, but not the nymph. The hook on the nymph had straightened out enough for the fish to shake it out. "Damn those barbless hooks! I'm sure I could'a landed the beast on a straight pin if it had a barb on it!"
If I hadn't already left reality in the dust, now it was disappearing from the rearview mirror.
I did what any blue-blooded trout fisherman would do and walked back to where I'd hooked the monster, tied on a new nymph, and started casting. Fishing got hot, if catching six- and seven-inch salmon smolts counts as fishing, and I'm counting them as fish.
After you lose a big one, anything you can dredge up is a fish.
SD2OR:
You certainly have a knack for story telling sir. If you were to write a book of your fly fishing adventures, with perhaps some dog antics thrown in, I'd certainly buy and read it.
It's always heartbreaking to lose a big fish, especially when one does everything right. Were it not for the challenge though, I doubt most of would enjoy our hobby as much as we do.
You have my condolences. Keep up the fishing, and the writing! Thank you for sharing!
Tinker:
The sad part was that it wasn't one of the nymphs you gave me - I tied it.
I find it's always better to be able to blame someone else. ;D
[WR]:
He's right though. You could probably get a freelance gig writing openers like that for fishing magazines . Heck, I think even a few now defunct airline mags would have paid you for stories like this.
hdpwipmonkey:
I had a new Tinker-tale with my morning coffee, its going to be a great day...