Snake Guides: Five for breakfast...

JP and I arrived at the cafe a little after 10 am. The drive in under blue skies and a light breeze looked, and felt, like spring. McSteel, Brother Billy and MK were just coming off of a late night at a Drive By Truckers concert and they were forgiven the 20 minutes extra they took to pull up a seat.

For the most part we ordered sausage gravy mixed with hashbrowns cheese and eggs. Whether gravy is the antidote for excessive barley and hops, we would soon find out...

Five guys isn't bad for a poker game, but it is usually a terrible idea for a day of trout fishing on our local diminutive spring creeks. We all rigged our rods, climbed into our waders and headed down the path. There were no plans and no beats called. We all just kind of dropped in, paired up (or fished alone) leapfrogged, hiked ahead or lagged back.

I fished over clean runs and in fished over runs. So did everybody else. It was a small miracle the way it all unfolded. Nobody lowholed (well almost nobody) nobody hotfooted, and nobody cared. It was spring, we were slinging line through ice free guides and fish were caught.

I pitched and swung my rabbit strip leech into any water that seemed reasonable and found a few takers.

Brother Billy fired tight loops to the far banks and when he wasn't fishing, he composed some great photos (which he was kind enough to send me for inclusion on this post).

McSteel unsheathed a cane rod and stepped into his methodical (if not surgical) dissection of the water. He's been away from this part of the state for a while but you'd never know it.

MK, showed us where he'd been moving fish on earler outings to this section. He was the unofficial guide. When the he said that he'd moved fish up to 17" on this stretch, I questioned him about that...when I got home and put a tape up to the mark on my rod that we measured my biggest trout against, it said 16 3/4". I completely botched rule #1..."don't question the guide". My apologies MK. You were right and I am so happily wrong!

JP, had some new equipment that he was looking forward to trying out and after a while he disappeared around a corner and did just that. When we finally reconnected, he appeared to have found God.

Although the day should have gone on for another 2 (days), 4 o'clock had everyone assembled back at the vehicles, talking about gear and beer and fish and runs and how we should try to do this again.

I fool myself constantly in thinking that this is all about the fish.