Part three of in a multi-part series about last weekend. Read The Appetizer and The Salad for the full meal so far. Stay tuned for more.
After catching several fish on dries, and losing just as many because of the barbless hooks and my own innate incompetency, I realized the fish were rising less and less often. Once I took my eyes of the water I noticed there were hardly any bugs swirling in the air over the stream and that the hatch was effectively over.
The cliff that I was fishing against was the base of a ridge at least 200 feet high. Because it was to my west, it was already blocking the sun just shortly after midday. Though the day was still warm, standing in the icy water in the shaded canyon left me feeling cold and stiff. I looked up to the other side of the river and saw the large, sunny abandoned pasture where I have often stopped to eat lunch.
Yes, it’s trespassing. Yes, I understand that some people get upset when someone enters their private land without their permission. Yes, I can even sort of understand why they would feel that way (though I would hope it’s more because of people not like me who litter and trample and break fences and basically leave plenty of trace of their passing).
And yes, I went up there anyway to eat my lunch.
The matted grass was dry and the sun felt closer than it had all winter and soon I felt the chill in my body melt away.
I have vices, about as many as your average guy or gal. One of them is Leinenkugel’s. I have taken to putting a can of Leinie’s Original in the pocket of my vest to have with my lunch (which sometimes means I leave a fly box with some important flies in it back in the car). It is a great pleasure to have a beer, even if slightly lukewarm, to drink with some bread, cheese and salami.
As I relaxed in the sunshine I thought it would be funny to create a piece of photographic “sporting art” like you might see in a still life of fly rods, shotguns, etc.
When I sat back and looked around I noticed that all the bugs that managed to escape the hungry trout, and that I had spent the previous hours trying to impersonate, were now up here in the sunny field, doing their mating dance. It was when they left the river for their migration to a more romantic location to mate that the dry fly fishing had shut down. Now, great pale clouds hovered from two to 10 feet off the ground.
Although lunch was an enjoyable break during a long day fishing, as soon as I was full I was ready to race back down to the river and resume fishing. I tried to take it a little slow and I carefully packed up all my trash, put my vest back on, and strolled back down to the water. One way or another, I was soon standing on the bank by the long riffle below the Blue Hole.
Though decent fish continued to rise very sporadically in some of the calmer water just downstream, I tied on a nymph and started working the riffles, trying to dead-drift my fly in the slightly calmer water of seams between the really fast stuff.
When I started out in the morning, I had thought after hiking way downstream I’d fish my way all the way back up to the bridge over the course of the long afternoon. But, I had so much fun picking my way up that one quiet 100 yard stretch that as the sun dipped low I had to make some time to get going. As I trekked back upstream I fished sporadically in the runs I couldn’t pass up, but mostly enjoyed the sunny day, the ubiquitous sound of the river, and of course, the scenery and wildlife.
“No man should go through life without once experiencing healthy, even bored solitude in the wilderness, finding himself depending solely on himself and thereby learning his true and hidden strength.” - Kerouac, Lonesome Traveler
Just before arriving back at the car, I stopped to soak it in and save it up in my subconscious until the next time I can get out. Here’s a little video of my “moment of zen” (large file).
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