Email this article

A beautiful morning . . .

By Steven J. Meyers

Found in: | Outside | Fishing | Fly Fishing |

You get up early to drive to a favorite river. On the way you try to guess what it will be like when you get there. This time of year, right after runoff, when the river has finally cleared and settled into a good, wadable flow - after the water has warmed from the earlier snowmelt - you just know bugs will be hatching and trout will be holding in all of your favorite runs, eager to eat. Speaking of favorite runs, you have one in mind you'd love to begin the day fishing, but when you arrive you discover that someone else had the same idea. He's planted himself in the middle of it. No matter. You move on.

A short hike takes you upstream to another run, one that never seems to hold quite as many fish, so instead of jumping in and pounding the water with a nymph, you decide to watch for a while to see if anything is happening. It's still early and the sun hasn't yet hit the water. A large brown trout - usually a nocturnal feeder - remains in a shallow place hugging the steep edge of a short cutbank in about a foot of water. You look closer. Damn, he's big.

Your heart begins to pound as you rig up, trying to figure out what a trout that large is doing in a place that exposed. Baitfish, you think. Last night he was pushing them toward the bank and grabbing them, and he hasn't yet retreated to his daytime sanctuary. So you tie on a streamer and carefully slip into the water a hundred feet below him. Carefully working your way out into the river, you wade slowly, trying not to make any noise, trying to keep the cobbles under your feet from rolling, trying not to make a sound or push a wake that will alert that big boy to your presence. When you get close enough to cast, you lay out your line, angling the fly up past him, landing it against the bank. A mend sets up a good drift and just as the little fish imitation nears the brown's snout, you begin to strip it away with short tugs. He chases it! But doesn't eat.

Then, he slowly retreats back into deep water and you watch, your heart still pounding, as the trout becomes a shadow and the shadow becomes a vanished spirit.

The sun continues to climb and you continue to work your way upriver, focusing on places where streamside trees shade the water. The trout you find now are smaller, but still beautiful, and a hatch of large midges is starting to come off. No trout are rising but you can see fish here and there suspended beneath the surface. You notice that their mouths are opening every now and then. The flash of white is unmistakable. So you tie on an old favorite- a black pupa ribbed with silver wire with a few strands of crystal flash for a wing. You fish it as an emerger, allowing the line to tighten as it nears each feeding fish causing the fly to rise up as if swimming toward the surface. The first trout you show it to eats it, and you land him. A healthy, solid fourteen incher with a big blue spot on his gill plate wiggles out of your submerged hands and quickly flees to sanctuary beneath a boulder, mid-stream.

You keep walking upstream, finding trout here and there, catching some, spooking others, as the sun climbs higher still. In the shady spots, a parachute Adams drifted over trout you see dimpling the surface hooks a few more.

Eventually, the broken shade cast by riparian trees rests directly beneath them no longer angling well out into the river, and the insects seem to have stopped hatching. The trout stop feeding.

It's well past midday, and you realize in the six or so hours you've been fishing you've worked your way a couple of miles upstream. You've fished a few favorite holes, found some fish along the bank in places you'd never seen them before, taken fish here and there and become so absorbed in what you were doing that you completely forgot about nearly everything that was not water, cobbles, streamside banks, shade trees, bugs and trout. A warm breeze carried the scent of damp earth to you and for a moment you thought about mushrooms. Not yet. It'll be a while before the boletes pop. An osprey soaring high filled you, as osprey always did, with a touch of envy. Your mind was utterly clear, focused on the immediate, the now, not the what might be, or the what needs to get done that so often filled it off the river.

With the sun high in the sky and the trout holding low you figure it might be a good time to take a break. You didn't pack a lunch today, so you head to town for a burger and a beer. As you walk past the run you thought you might fish first when you left home you see the same guy who was there hours ago, still making repetitive casts out into deep water, his bright orange indicator bobbing after the line lands, the sound of his huge lead weight making a resounding plunk as it hits the surface.

Sitting at the counter, you order a True Blond (the ale) and a cheeseburger with fries. Halfway through it, your buddy from the river plods in and plops himself down at a table, felt-soled boots leaving wet paw prints on the scarred wooden floor. The waitress, Christie, approaches him wearing a tee-shirt that only half-kiddingly reads, "We cheat tourists and drunks." You smile. She's a friend. She begins to take his order, and he volunteers without being asked, "The fishing was epic!"

It's always epic for those guys, you think. Never simply good. Certainly never bad. Always, epic.

"I musta landed a couple dozen! Epic!! Don't think I even saw one under twenty-inches!!" He orders a Reuben sandwich and a Corona then turns to the table next to him to expound further on his good fortune.

Christie asks me how I did, and I tell her, "A few. A few. A beautiful morning."

"Yeah, she smiles back, a beautiful morning."