There's no such word, but these are the sorts of things that come to mind when you are by your lonesome, laying on the forest floor focusing on breathing and stretching to relive tension in your back. I find I really feel do fatigue now, that close to two decades of tromping around in the woods, rivers, and urban landscape with a variety of shoulder-mounted carrying cases- be the slings or back packs -loaded up with cameras, fishing tackle, and necessities did eventually start to do damage. So I can't just ignore it anymore. I have to pick and chose what I carry and how I carry it, and I need to rest and stretch. And so that's what I was doing, twisted into an odd pose on the forest floor, trying to get my diaphragm to do what I'm told it should do instead of what years of bad posture have taught it to do; and trying to stretch the muscles in my shoulder so I wouldn't keep wanting to kill myself so much. It would be a rather odd sight were anyone to come upon me, but such an encounter would be doubtful. This was BFE, if ever such a place existed. I'd just caught the first fish of the day. She was a lovely little brook trout no more than four and a half inches in length and had come up for a dark colored deer-hair caddis. I was fishing the way I wanted to this day: with a dry fly. This was to spite fairly cool water temperatures. I'm sure that I could have tempted a few more and perhaps larger fish with a nymph of some sort, but there was no need. Some bugs were active, including the cursory winter stones which occasionally skittered across the pools. I only saw one meet its demise in the rise form of a fish, though. A few hundred yards in and the plop of the little char as I dropped it from by barbless hook back into the stream told me I could take a rest.
So there I lay in the dappled light on the forest floor, stretching and thinking about everything and nothing. It was a very bright, bluebird day. A cold front had passed through overnight, draped from a low pressure center that tracked through Canada. In front of it had been seasonably warm air in the mid to high fifties, as well as some rain and clouds. Though the air behind the front wasn't cold necessarily it was cold-er. And wind came with it. It whipped the tree tops about a bit and I occasionally heard a branch come down. Not big ones, really, but enough to make me wonder if one might clock me in the head at some point. The sun and the deep blue sky felt a bit contrary to the wind, but the two do often come in tandem. Those dry, clear, bright post-frontal day are wind makers. The blue was brilliant though, and the radiant heat from our burning gas ball was doing wonders for my hands that had gotten a little chilled coming in contact with the water.
When I did finally stand back up I felt a fair bit better, but everything was bluer than it ought to be. The bright sky had left a lasting tint to my vision that lingered a good few minutes. I shouldered my sling pack, this time backwards to try to counteract the lingering soreness in my right shoulder, and told myself to just leave it in the car next time. I'd be far better off pocketing a box of flies and spool of tippet, and did I really need the camera?
I worked my way down stream, being picky about where I fished. This wasn't the time to try to eek a fish out of every nook and cranny, I just wanted to fish some of the longer runs and pools. I didn't used to fish down very often. It was Alan Petrucci that changed my direction in that regard. Prior to knowing Alan I fished pretty strictly upstream, trying to stay behind and out of sight of the trout. This worked fine, but I learned from Alan that I could put my fly in places while going down that one just couldn't get it to while going up. I still fish up sometimes, but not always.
I reached a run that that looks perfect, and eased into a position on the bank well above it. I gathered my fly line in hand, pulled back, and let it fly in a short bow and arrow cast. I then fed line to let the fly drift down the run. When it had drifted a distance I felt sufficient, I let it come about and hang in the current. A waking dry fly like this has almost universal appeal to Salvelinus fontinalis. On one of the popular and pressured stretches of river in northern Maine I was told to fish stonefly nymphs, that a mono rig would serve me well, that these brook trout were harder. I listened, but only for a bit. Frustration and my own rationale wouldn't let me fish a mono rig to a big wild brook trout, it felt counter to what should be done. Perhaps luck is a better friend to me than I usually suspect it is, but I had absolutely no difficulty catching robust brookies and landlocked salmon on a skated Hornberg. Don't let these nymphing nerds fool you; brook trout love a skated fly. And even in that barely forty degree water in Central Connecticut, it worked a charm. Up came a brookie, and I whiffed him like I was trying to. I played with that fish for a little while, getting it to come up again and again. Eventually, despite my best efforts, the hook did get stuck in that trout's mouth.
I took another break, though not a stretching one. My camera had come out of my bag for the fish, may as well use it. I'm not sure why photography has always been a compulsion for me. From a technical standpoint, I remain very much an amateur. But there's been a camera in my hand on and off for almost as long as I have memories... pointed at the sky, at animals, at water. It's just something I do because it feels good and because I like pretty things.
Thank you to my Patrons; Erin, David, John, Elizabeth, Brandon, Christopher, Shawn, Mike, Sara, Franky, Geof, Luke, Noah, Justin, Sean, Tom, Mark, Jake, Chris, Oliver, oddity on Display, Sammy, and Cris & Jennifer, Courtney, Hunter, Gordon, Thomas, Trevor, Eric, and Evan for making Connecticut Fly Angler possible. If you want to support this blog, look for the Patreon link at the top of the right side-bar in web version.
No comments:
Post a Comment