Playing With Fire

This may not start like a fishing story, but trust me, it is.

 Today I got bored and tossed an entire block of magnesium in the fire. The type that comes with a lint striker. It glowed a powerful chrome light that blinded me for several minutes. I had never seen magnesium burn, other than little shavings. This was a whole new story.

As much as I prefer native or wild trout, stocked fish can be fun. The bright and powerful burn reminded me, somehow, of fishing for rainbow trout in the spring. They were recently stocked and gullible, but had been in the river long enough that they had some fight. The fish my father and I were hunting were easily taken on a hair's ear. I hooked a small wild one on a march brown, my dad landed one on a sucker spawn pattern.

The fish we were catching were being as acrobatic as a rainbow gets, jumping left and right, tail walking, and diving. They would jump far from the leader-line connection, including once when we were doubled up. We were confused as to whose fish was whose!

The trout were chrome and flashy like the magnesium as it burned down, but with patches of peach, green, and black.