powerbait
03-13-2006, 05:44 PM
I suspect a fair number of fly fishers are wannabee fish writers as well, and I confess I’m one of them. But talk is cheap, and the challenge is putting pen to paper. So, here’s my first effort. Call it “Curse of the Rising Trout.”
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Rising fish bug me: they’re an irritant, a distraction. I’m a nympher by training and by choice, and generally a content one at that. I fish nymphs; I catch lots of fish. What’s not to like? Rising fish only spoil the fun. The nymphing may be working just fine, and then, suddenly, a soft “plip” and the tell-tale concentric rings of a rising fish. Then another and another. Eventually, I clip off my tested and true nymphs and tie on a worthless dry fly, flog the water for an hour or so—to no avail—only to switch back to nymphs in frustration.
Dry fly fishing … pshaw! Dry fly fishing is for rich people, Presbyterians, and dentists. I am none of these.
So, a few days back, I find myself fishing the outlet of a reservoir in south-central Utah an hour or so before sunset. Here and there fish rise—plip, plip—but I don’t care. I’m interested in catching fish, not chasing them. After 45 minutes of watching my strike indicator without so much as a twitch, however, I sit down on a rock to ponder the deeper questions of life and fly fishing: “What the Hell are those fish eating?!” It’s early March, bitterly cold, and a stiff wind howls across the high desert, blasting strange patterns on the surface of the water. Not exactly party time in the insect community. So I get my nose down near the water and watch. There! Sure enough. A midge. Looks to be a size 32.
Rifling through my sparse dry fly box, I tie on the best I can do: a griffith’s gnat, size 22—a bit of peacock feather wrapped with a bit of rooster feather and resembling nothing more than a bit of sock lint.
The flogging begins in earnest, and better yet: flogging in the wind. A fish rises, I lay the fly two feet to the right … nothing. I can almost hear ‘em laughing. I cast right, left, center; in-shore, off-shore, and in between. Still nothing.
I chase the fish. “Gee, they seem to be rising a lot over there.” I go over there. Nothing. Now they’re rising back where I started. I head back. Nothing.
At long last, the day winds down, and, in the gloaming (I’m not quite sure what “gloaming” means, but it sounds like a good dry fly word), the wind dies to a whisper. I can barely see my fly now, just a dark dimple all but lost in the reflected sky.
“Plip”—the line goes taught for an instant, then slack again. My pulse quickens. A moment later, another “plip,” I set the hook, and this time the line stays taught. A few moments later, I pull a shimmering 10” cutthroat to the bank, where I tease the hook out with a pair of forceps and set him free.
The next 10 minutes see a flurry of activity: I miss lots of strikes and land one more. The action comes to an abrupt halt after that, but I cast on, trying to make out that tiny dry fly by the light of a waning crescent, and setting the hook any time a fish rises within 20 feet of where my fly should be.
At last I give up and head to the car, oddly satisfied. Two small fish in two hours? Pathetic by nymphing standards, but then I can't quite forget the way the fly floated on that smooth, reflective surface, suspended between two worlds, or the excitement I felt when a fish rose to the fly.
“Hmm,” I catch myself thinking, “When can I try that again?”
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Rising fish bug me: they’re an irritant, a distraction. I’m a nympher by training and by choice, and generally a content one at that. I fish nymphs; I catch lots of fish. What’s not to like? Rising fish only spoil the fun. The nymphing may be working just fine, and then, suddenly, a soft “plip” and the tell-tale concentric rings of a rising fish. Then another and another. Eventually, I clip off my tested and true nymphs and tie on a worthless dry fly, flog the water for an hour or so—to no avail—only to switch back to nymphs in frustration.
Dry fly fishing … pshaw! Dry fly fishing is for rich people, Presbyterians, and dentists. I am none of these.
So, a few days back, I find myself fishing the outlet of a reservoir in south-central Utah an hour or so before sunset. Here and there fish rise—plip, plip—but I don’t care. I’m interested in catching fish, not chasing them. After 45 minutes of watching my strike indicator without so much as a twitch, however, I sit down on a rock to ponder the deeper questions of life and fly fishing: “What the Hell are those fish eating?!” It’s early March, bitterly cold, and a stiff wind howls across the high desert, blasting strange patterns on the surface of the water. Not exactly party time in the insect community. So I get my nose down near the water and watch. There! Sure enough. A midge. Looks to be a size 32.
Rifling through my sparse dry fly box, I tie on the best I can do: a griffith’s gnat, size 22—a bit of peacock feather wrapped with a bit of rooster feather and resembling nothing more than a bit of sock lint.
The flogging begins in earnest, and better yet: flogging in the wind. A fish rises, I lay the fly two feet to the right … nothing. I can almost hear ‘em laughing. I cast right, left, center; in-shore, off-shore, and in between. Still nothing.
I chase the fish. “Gee, they seem to be rising a lot over there.” I go over there. Nothing. Now they’re rising back where I started. I head back. Nothing.
At long last, the day winds down, and, in the gloaming (I’m not quite sure what “gloaming” means, but it sounds like a good dry fly word), the wind dies to a whisper. I can barely see my fly now, just a dark dimple all but lost in the reflected sky.
“Plip”—the line goes taught for an instant, then slack again. My pulse quickens. A moment later, another “plip,” I set the hook, and this time the line stays taught. A few moments later, I pull a shimmering 10” cutthroat to the bank, where I tease the hook out with a pair of forceps and set him free.
The next 10 minutes see a flurry of activity: I miss lots of strikes and land one more. The action comes to an abrupt halt after that, but I cast on, trying to make out that tiny dry fly by the light of a waning crescent, and setting the hook any time a fish rises within 20 feet of where my fly should be.
At last I give up and head to the car, oddly satisfied. Two small fish in two hours? Pathetic by nymphing standards, but then I can't quite forget the way the fly floated on that smooth, reflective surface, suspended between two worlds, or the excitement I felt when a fish rose to the fly.
“Hmm,” I catch myself thinking, “When can I try that again?”