The last day of the season. The last time stringing up my rod. Last flies tied to tippet. Last casts. Last time clipping off the fly in the parking lot. Last time putting the rod back in its tube.
The sun setting, me awed again at what its low angle does to the thick still-green grasses along the river. I breathe in the air real deep, filling my mind with the smell and my lungs with the clean air.
This river still a mystery, not my “home” water, all I know is that I came here once and caught a very large fish and that it hasn’t been repeated in all the other times I’ve come here, but I keep coming. I go directly to the stretch below where I got the good one that one time. I go maybe 300 feet and a few big grassy oxbows downstream and fish my way up up to that hole. I toss crickets as tight to the bank as I can, discovering that some of the things I learned recently on the big, windy rivers out West can be applied to making these funny sidearm casts I have to make to avoid the weeds while standing a couple feet back from the water’s edge.
When I finally get to the shady, peaceful corner hole where a 20″ fish once slurped my cricket it is like being in an empty church. I walk very deliberately toward the river, as quiet as I can. I see the “V” in the water where it flows out through some hanging branches right before heading into the deepest part of the corner. Where I had spotted that fish holding just a couple inches below the surface that time.
I can’t see a fish there now and I take a few steps downstream and look to where I usually get down into the river to cast, the little gravel bar a foot or two below the surface, my pew from which I cast my little prayers every time I come here.
I don’t go down there now but instead work over the water from the bank. Nothing happens except a final desperate assault by the mosquitoes. The mosquitoes seem to be there to remind me of something, but I don’t know what. All evening I see big V’s of geese flying overhead. Big frogs jump off the path in front of me. On the walk back to the car through the big field I flush a covey of four or five pheasants.
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2 Comments
Sweet little reflective piece. I’m curious about your grasshoppers. Are you using a fly designed to imitate them or is grasshopper the name of a type of fly? I caught a rainbow the other day with a pumpkin colored caddis. As you know, I’m still very new to fishing so I don’t have all the flies and language down.
the flies I was using were cricket imitations. usually when someone refers to cricket/beetle/grasshopper/ant flies, they are referring to actual imitations of those bugs, which collectively are known as the “terrestrials.” it’s some of my favorite late-summer fishing, though it can be a bit hit-or-miss.
congrats on the rainbow! so glad to hear you’re enjoying the fishing, i kind of thought you would.