At 4:00 am my alarm screamed. When I set it 3 hours earlier I considered what 3 hours of sleep feels like and gave myself the option to disregard the buzzer and go back to sleep. With the switch set back to "more sleep", I put my head on my pillow and thought about it for 2 minutes and then hit the shower. By 5:00 I was parked by the stream and sliding on my waders, 16 ounces of gas-station coffee coursing through my veins and having the desired effect.
The low areas of the valley were shrouded in layers of fog that made for a surreal landscape to go trout fishing in. The plan was to nymph up some brown trout in the morning and then paste some hoppers once the sun came up, burned off the haze and got the world buzzing. That was the plan.
I botched the first fish after dredging with a zebra midge for 30 minutes. The line paused and I pulled with the kind of effort that is required to pull a fly off of a rock or weed on the bottom. I felt the tell-tale tug-tug of a fish and realized only after the line went slack that I had broken a cardinal nymphing rule. The next fish came 20 minutes later, a smallish 8" fish that got the hook caught under it's belly. I am not a fish counter, but even so, this fish didn't count.
By 7:30 I was back on the road trying to decide what was next. I was thinking about smallmouth and how they crash baitfish and bonefish chasing down and inhaling shrimp flies. I was thinking about how little trout fishing I do these days and how, at the moment, I was tired and feeling pretty uninspired. Considering that I had a day to fish, a beautiful stream in front of me a car-load of rods and flies and a perfectly beautiful August day...I started to feel like a spoiled ass.
I pulled off on a side road that leads to a not so secret spot on this not secret trout stream. Leaving my rod in the car I carried the last few sips of my cold gas station coffee to the bridge and stood staring into the current. There I made up my mind to not be such an ass.
I fished the bridge pool with a nymph, deep and slow. Paying attention and mending my line often. I once hooked and landed an 18" brown here among the discarded worm containers and recall feeling pretty smug about it. The same outcome would be welcome today, but despite my renewed enthusiasm, nothing happened. I noticed a half dozen Blue Winged Olive mayflies circling in the eddy by my feet and when I waded back to shore I stopped to photograph a spider's web containing a few that had become ensnared.
The lush aquatic vegetation made the nymphing upstream tricky. Short lanes of clear deep water ran between the mats of green and tried my best to drift my fly down these lanes in hopes that the trout would shoot out from under their summer cover and take a bite. Even the deep corners, where the deep water ran easy against the bank and the drifts were long, left me blank.
There was a moment when I thought, "I have become a perfectly shitty trout fisherman".
A rise form against the bank made me look up from tying on the foam terrestrial. I finished the knot, aired out some line and dropped it 3 feet upstream from the commotion. A trout smacked it but the hook failed to stick. Finally...something. I stayed with the terrestrial for the next few bends and hooked but failed to land a nice fish that had risen mid-stream. In the run above that fish's lie, another fish rose and then another...
Either the hatch had just started or I had just started to pay attention. In the run above me, the little Blue Winged Olives that I had seen downstream in the eddy and in the spider web were popping up , floating down and taking flight. The foam fly found it's way back in it's box and 36" of 6x tippet was married, via bloodknot, to my leader. To the business end I attached a size 18 parachute style BWO with a light gray turkey flat post and dun hackle. This was to be the last fly I tied on today.
What happened next can be described as trout fishing nirvana. A fish rose and after three drifts ate my dry fly. The next fish ate as well but the hook popped as I set. With the sun high, I could see the fish had gone back to finning in it's holding spot in front of a midstrem rock. For thirty minutes I worked it, getting flat out refusals and inspection rises until finally everything fell into place and it tipped up and ate again. This time the hook stuck.
As one fish was landed and released, another fish, a few feet upstream from the last started rising. It was 3 hours and 200 yards of the stream...fish after fish. At 2:00 in the afternoon and I was nearing the end of things. I had caught and released every rising fish that I saw. From thoughts of being a shitty fisherman to this...all in the same day.
The last fish rose under the branches of a bush and having batted 1000 I confidently made the 40' cast...as with all of the others, the trout tipped up and ate. I set the hook and could see the trout's head turn toward me, the white of it's open mouth visible as the fly popped out.
For what seemed like 5 minutes I stood there thinking about the success of the morning and the lesson this last fish taught me on the importance of humility and the concept of having enough.
And then the same fish rose again...so I cast my size 18 parachute BWO back in and I caught him too.
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