Sunday - March 16th, 2008

When it comes to fishing I find that its soul cleansing powers are second to none. That being said, the less cleansing that is required the better time I usually have. When I arrive at the water, at ease, relaxed and ready to fish, that's what I do. I fish. When I feel that I need to go fishing for an "escape", it seems to me that the motions and actions of this act we call fly fishing do a pretty good job of easing me out and getting me back to level. But, what I really like is fishing for fishing's sake. I like when I don't have to cancel out some other distraction and use fishing as a tool to do it.

So, this morning, I dutifully scrubbed and vacuumed the floors of the ol' homestead before departing. I doubt that my wife heralded me the husband of the year and called her mother glowing about her excellent choice in husbands...but I headed to my favorite spring creek with a clear conscience.

The point of this ramble is that I felt I had the JuJu on my side today and I decided to keep the size 16 scuds in my vest. I tied on 18 inches of 3x, bit down on two, larger than normally prescribed for spring creek, split shots and a size 6, 3x long shank, black woolly bugger. I was looking for meat, girth and violence. Most of the time I like the precision placement of a size 24 lint ball on 8x. But sometimes I feel the need to assault my dainty little spring creek and try to bludgeon it into submission. Heavy tippet, lotsa lead, fishing downstream. It's the antithesis of all that is spring creek angling with a fly. I'm certain Halford (our father of upstream, dry-fly, cast only to fish you can see, fame) turned in his grave today.

The results? Well for me they were damn good. My first three fish were 16", 17" and 18". Now, lest you scoff at my readiness to spew fish sizes, let me clarify one small point. To me, on my spring creek, that is a banner day. I know other guys catch fish like that regularly, but it's been a while since I was a live to fish, meals optional, trout bum type. I've got floors to clean for chrissakes. I have a number of photo albums in the basement with all kinds of fish porn from my 2o something years. But even there, I don't think I ever landed three fish like that in the middle of the afternoon and consecutively. I have stated in the past to my fishing pals, and most of them agree with me, 16 is the magic number on our spring creeks. At 16" you take a longer look, you notice a thickness that a 14" fish has yet to attain. You say "Damn, that's a nice trout". And, when I landed the 16" brown today, that's exactly what I did. 35 yards downstream, when the 17" fish tried to pound the hackle off of my fly I thought, "Shit. This is great!" It was noticeably larger than the first and I cradled it in the water a few second longer than maybe I should have, just to admire it. Another 35 yards downstream when the largest of the three ambushed the black bugger from an undercut bank, I actually got a little giddy. I didn't think I was nervous, but as I tried to hold this fish steady for a snapshot, I noticed I was breathing hard and my heart was racing. In retrospect, I suppose that the additional blood pumping wildly through my body accounts for why my fingers didn't get cold as I admired this fish with my digits submerged in the frigid stream.

After that, I managed another 1/2 dozen 12" firm, feisty browns before I called it a day and drove home.

The good news in all of this is that the particular stretch of stream I was on suffered horribly a few years back from what amounts to agricultural ineptitude. It was completely devastated. The stream has slowly regained a foothold and the trout have returned. Today was evidence of that.