the dharma blog

My opening weekend fishing report. Kind of wrote this up earlier in the week, meant to post it.

I skipped Saturday and waited for Sunday, still not quite sure why… My first water was a new little creek in West Central, a beautiful pasture section with a lot of TU work evident which a fellow young angler and Kerouac-head by the name of John Mowery had turned me on to. I was surprised by how very narrow it was. It proved to be a challenging target for my rusty casting skills, but a great place to start and I actually really impressed myself with how often I was able to hit my targets.

As there weren’t any other footprints in the snow, I think I was the first fisherman to terrorize the waters this year… I didn’t see any fish until the end, when I dropped my tippet over the ledge of a lunker structure and got a couple of the little brookies hiding underneath to nibble, but not bite.

After that, I left for another, slightly more familiar, river. Drove through some new territory, just enjoying the old feeling of driving in my waders and boots, the sunny day, the music, the window down, the gazetteer open in my lap.

After quite some time, realized I had went east when I should have went west. Turned around. Drove back 15 miles.

Eventually made my way to this river which I had been dreaming about all winter for it’s blue-green color and narrow deep runs with little browns hiding out, waiting for my nymph. Yesterday, it was raging and the color of coffee with cream. Feeder creeks that are bone-dry most the year were torrents in their own right.

After not too long, I thought what the hell, the Kinni is on my way home. Parked in town, walked downstream. Walked past quite a few fishermen. Walked further downstream. Walked further downstream. Finally got to what would have been a nice section if it weren’t for the high muddy water and I sat on a bench and ate my bread, cheese and summer sausage, drank the can of Premium that I had foregone my box of streamers to bring with… Watched the river.

A couple of young guys in a canoe went shooting by, exchanged brief words. Guy in the stern was talkative, guy up front was a little scared-looking with the current and the logs and all that. Thought that if I was ever going to canoe that river, this would have been the day.

Walked back upstream, slowly. Tried crossing a feeder creek that had been tricky but manageable on my way down, nearly knocked off my feet by the current and struggled back to the bank. I remembered I had seen a log down across the creek earlier, so I made my way up the creek to it. The small log was a few feet above the water and had a couple 2 x 4s nailed to it to level things out. I slowly inched across it, thinking about how I felt like my balance has gotten bad lately. Made it.

A little ways upstream I sat on a log with my feet dangling my feet in the water and smoked a Backwoods cigar. The late afternoon sun on my back made me think of June evenings. Very close to the water, I could see that some very small mayflies were hovering over the raging water, doing their thing, landing briefly to lay eggs, carried a couple feet downstream, airborne just long enough to recover those two feet, then back down.

Walked back to the car, thinking of how it’s good to know that fish or even good fishing are never guaranteed by Mother Earth.