Splash Down

We found a rope swing next to the river. It was just begging to be used. Neither Noah nor I could consistently pull ourselves high enough up the rope to keep from hitting the water on the down swing. But that wonderful feeling of plunging down into the river and letting the cold water rush over reminded me that I'm still a kid, and probably always be. I just keep doing things that make me smile with people that make me smile... and learning. I never want to stop.

Sometimes learning is more like-relearning. I can't tell you how many lessons I've learned that have needed hammered home once more. One is never ignore shallow water if there's cover and the speed of the flow is right. We were out on a mid sized bass river or large trout river depending on your perspective, and we were catching a few but the size was lacking Noah had hooked and lost a very large fish, species unknown, and I'd gotten into a surprisingly loaded pocket of rainbows. We weren't after trout, and after a bit it got almost annoying how many we were catching compared to the two species we were after; smallmouth and fallfish. As a waded down through a wide riffle, I glanced at an overhanging tree on river left where a bit of water dumped off a gravel bar and hit the bank, making a pocket maybe only a foot deep, but shaded and with just the right sort of riffle on the surface. This was the kind of bit of subtle lie a lot of fisherman walk past, but it was also a classic big trout lie. I ignored it, thinking these little stocked rainbows weren't worth my walking over there just to catch one, maybe two more of. And it wasn't a good smallmouth lie. So I passed it by. Noah and I got some bass down river, as well as his biggest fallfish and some more rainbows. But on the way back up, I looked back over at that same pocket under the tree and reminded myself to be smart. "Don't pass up that spot, it's perfect. There will be a fish in there." It would be a sneaky cast and short drift, and I likely wouldn't feel a take but would have to set on intuition alone. Knowing how my fly sinks in different current speeds and types of flow in addition to where fish are likely to hold has allowed me to catch fish that I would never have seen or felt take. This isn't something I learned on my own, Joe Humphreys in particular planted the seeds. But my many hours on the water and my ability to observe and read and feel the way my presentation fishes is certainly a huge player. I try to be a student of the water.

I waded onto the gravel bar just above the end of the hanging try and made a tuck cast into the rough water at the top of the pocket. I let my fly fall for 3 seconds after splash down, then set the hook. I was right, I'd felt nothing at all, but my rod buckled over as a big rainbow broke the surface. She'd been right where I thought she'd be and she ate first drift as soon as the fly got down. Now I had to keep her out of the overhanging brush. Frankly, it wasn't hard. My tippet was 2x, and I wasn't afraid to put the cork to this fish. She tried, she ran pretty hard and jumped a few more times, but I had the upper hand.

Even though we caught a ton of fish that day, including some nice river smallmouth on top later that evening, that rainbow reminded me of a couple important lessons that I'd let slip. Never skip those subtle shallow pockets, keep the fly in fishy water as much as you can throughout the day, and set impulsively. I'll never be as good a fisherman as I want to be, but the more I think and observe, the more I remind myself of lessons past, the better I'll be. Ironically it's the way I did things as a little kid: full immersion. I . I've changed it a lot of ways but I doubt I'll ever lose that.
Until next time,

Fish for the love of fish.

Fish for the love of places fish live.

Fish for you.

And stay safe and healthy.

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