Somewhere, over the rainbow...

The closest piece of trout water to my home (approx 2 miles) was visited by me and JW on Sunday. I've been to this creek before, walked it. Scouted it. Spotted fish in it. But it is small. And Tough. Really Tough. It's unfishable by Mid-May. The grass grows tall and leans out over the surface foiling every attempt at a cast. But it's close. I wore hip boots for the first time in about decade. Not that the creek is shallow. It has some very nice deep undercuts and channels. I was trying to fit in a quick fish before dinner and hip boots just seemed the right footwear for an early season Blitzkrieg. I grabbed my camera, because I thought I'd take some really sweet iced guide, cold horizon shots for this blog. The batteries died. As we were rigging up I saw a rise. Honest to goodness concentric circles midstream. Then we saw another. I tied on a size 28 belly-button lint dry fly and blazed away without luck. It wasn't until I switched to a weighted black zonker concoction and started dapping the dark grooves that the noses started to peak out from under the banks. All told the creek is maybe a mile long. It's gin clear and doesn't get much pressure except maybe from some local farm kids once worms are legal. But by the time I made it to the top of my self imposed 300 yard beat, I'd missed 3 or 4 fish and spooked twice that many. And these were decent trout! The technique (and I use the term loosely) was basically a long dap and steer the fly kind of affair, but trout this close to home warmed my heart. Visions of fishing my lunch break on a Tuesday afternoon in April kept my gloveless fingertips warm as I shuffled back to the car. Dapping and steering as I went, working the opposite bank back downstream ... I finally wrangled one. 9 inches of local brown trout, caught and released. Victory on the home front.