The river was laid out flat below the riffle like a pool table, smooth, clear, and dark.
Bank brush, thick alder and willow line the banks, protecting the water and from long, easy casts.
No hint of a current there, and eddy-free.
But great for floating a fly.
And that’s the idea.
A deer trail below the pool opens up the bank enough to let anglers ease into the water.
Assessing river-water starts with the eyes, sure, but those first tentative steps off the riverbank into the water allows wader-sheathed legs to gauge the pressure.
Water pressure against legs is the constant life and heartbeat of the trout stream we feel.
Oh winter, seems like a long time.
But when our waders enter the water again, it’s as if there never had been a disconnect, a time away from this water.
No, never really left.
The legs never forgot.
And the fly rod followed, never felt so light with those first tentative casts.
Fly rods are not heavy bass rods, pool cues.
Fly rods on our streams flick with a wrist. No two-handed casts here with heavy spinner baits, musky jitterbugs.
On the trout stream now. No thoughts of tuning the trim when the boat’s on plane, skimming across the surface with only the transom and the lower unit in the water, reading electronics, fishing cottage-encrusted lakes.
Not here on this close, silent river.
Sure, it’s all fishing, but two different watery worlds.
Timeless light over the trout stream as the fly began flicking over the deep, tree-lined pool. A weightless fly. A piece of fluff with pinpoint, failsafe, GPS coordinates of where and how to land.
Backwards.
Our flies after all, fly through the air backwards.
Flies always fly backwards.
Flies land backwards.
Fly-head hook eyes knotted to long thin strands of the finest diameter monofilament.
The taper is tiniest at the eye, and ever wider until buried and wound, lost in the depths up to the reel’s backing.
The fly boxes in our vests are filled.
Tiny flies, everything from nymphs, caddis imitations, spinner replications, and streamers, mostly tied at home on the desk, and sometimes the dining room table, and once in a while, even in the truck, streamside.
Some flies are bought and appear classic with a homogeny of quality and material that only comes from the traditional shops or over the Internet.
Many a fly that has appeared wrapped too sparsely, exacerbated by countless false casts, replete with frayed threads, trout tooth ripped and unraveled was inexplicably the best producer in the box.
Experienced trout fishermen can develop an extra sense.
Somehow these homegrown, stream-borne instincts remain hidden below our surface, latent, still and maybe even forgotten for a while as life gets in the way.
One such developed reflex has to do with the back-cast.
If an overhanging branch is ticked by the fly (and not hung up,) an automatic compensation kicks in. The rod is micro-adjusted so that the next cast is altered just enough to be free and unimpeded.
These deepening lessons we learn on the water are too subtle and too many to enumerate, like trying to count the ones that got away.
Suffice it to say, when the line tightens with the pulsating throb of a nice trout, the wrist pressure is applied instinctively to the butt of the rod.
Too much pressure and the line breaks, or the wispy shard of jaw skin, which the tiny hook has penetrated, tears away.
The trout is free.
Our slack line bows and swings quickly downstream empty, like an unanswered call.
Too little pressure on the rod and line allows Mr. Trout to shake his head in absolute negation and physical rejection, sometimes throwing the fly out of the water and back at the fisherman.
Or so it seems.
The empty, weak, curving line swings downstream by the constant endless current.
When nothing is on the end of the line steam-side we know it’s a loss, but also a triumph of liberty and the will to be free.
Seeing wild freedom is never completely bad, though often disappointing.
On the trout stream, rejections and objections are called part of the mystery and appeal of trout fishing. Success is learning how to overcome them.
The first sign of insect activity was a boiling mass of thin-legged, wasp-waisted, clear-winged, mayflies, way up at tree top level, over the black-stoned riffle.
And almost at the same time caddis flies buzzed the surface, drunkenly lurching in that arbitrary pattern of movement observed around “last call” at the watering holes.
And in contrast, the stately Stenonema duns lift from the surface film as in slow motion, oblivious to the ravenous predators so close below.
Meanwhile the diminutive and ubiquitous flies split their nymphal shucks along their backs and turn instantly from dark, brown crawling, bottom grubbing, underwater bugs into delicate, winged moth-like things of the air.
A hatch is metamorphous in the surface film of the trout stream, not birth, further along than that.
But a real good trout was feeding in a little swirl where another part of the stream merged again with the main flow, at the tail of the big riffle.
And he was smart.
Turned his beak up at the finest offerings and best presentations.
But one last cast, on the way back upstream, just at dark. One more try.
Had to.
Beat or be beaten.
A drum beat in time with the fly rod for all fishers.
No shame in being beaten by a big, wily, wild trout.
“Go ahead. Show me the lesson.”
Darkening skies makes trout bolder eaters. And that fish sipped down the fly on just this side of dark.
Instantly, the rod tip raised and then bowed under by the pull of the heavy fish, the steady current, and taunt line.
The reel whirled its wondrous tune from tiny metal gears. A song of delight to anglers, blending with the background gurgles of the river below the riffle.
The river allows us to hold for a moment a big wild brown trout with red spots, yellow sides, hooked beak and glaring eyes before quickly swallowing him back with a slurp.
Oak Duke writes a weekly column appearing on the Outdoors page.
Credit: Source link
