Streamer Junkie

Maybe it was the right time. Maybe I was just lucky. Maybe I was more patient and more observant than I had been years ago.

Gin clear water, turquoise pools that tricked your mind into thinking you were in the Bahamas, desert bluffs silhouetted against the quickly fading evening skies and the dizzying Milky Way shortly afterward. Cave drawings. Waterfalls. White water. Massive pools several football fields long and wide flanked by cliffs topped off with motionless observing mountain goats.

Does everything have to change until the life you remember as a child is completely gone in the life you have as an adult?

Time froze for a second and I could see the bugger in its mouth and had just enough time to wonder how a trout could sit on the bottom motionless in such a current with a fly stuck in its mouth and a 4wt rod bent over and hold it’s position seemingly effortlessly.

Next to the Church pew on the porch had set a deer skull found in the creek a couple springs ago, and now the odd baseball sat there with it. Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s great that they both love to play, but this is me, and me not fishing is the universe on the verge of chaos. And no one likes that hanging over their head.

But there’s something to be said about a good snag. It reminds you what it feels like if only for a second to find a fish. And remembering that feeling suddenly can have an effect on your mind. I think it’s called hope. Hope ain’t bad.

I half heartedly drift a large black nymph pattern through all the slack waters I can find. In my mind I see it drifting, bouncing downstream, it’s black silhouette against the light brown water with the sun beating down on it as if it was a warm sunny day. It’s not a warm day of course, but if I couldn’t feel the cold on my face and hands then the appearance alone could have me fooled.

We drove down the road, pulled into a fishing access pull off next to the river, and the two of us did our best to dredge the bottom of what open water we could find while JP, camera in hand, recorded the morning for posterity. The trees were heavy with snow, evergreen branches weighed down with white precipitation hung low, again the river and surroundings seemed to be a black and white photograph.