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.
After JP had taken a few moments to stand in the middle of the creek leaning on his walking stick, absorbing in the view, he rigged up his fly rod. A few casts later he said something about his headache being gone. I asked him “Oh, had a headache did ya?” And he said yes, for two weeks now. Tylenol wasn’t touching it. Whiskey may have helped him sleep but probably wasn’t helping it. But a few minutes standing in a creek and it was gone. I told him I guess we knew what was causing the headache. He nodded in agreement.
. Whatever patterns I take are stuck on my hat, a couple spools of tippet, and my small net. I don’t worry about running out anymore. I don’t think it’s that I’ve become such a proficient angler that I never lose flies in trees or break off fish, because I still do those things frequently enough to say I’m still fairly good at them. I do it because it’s just simpler, not carrying all the extra crap with me on a creek.
Paul looked at me and said something about it seeming like it would be a shame not to give it a shot, and he was right. Too good to be true or not, I tied on the smallest streamer I had, crouched, and made a bow and arrow cast sending the streamer back in deep at the top of the ledge and let it drift through.
I’d be ashamed of the lack of lawn care, laundry, and house cleaning I get done if it was anything other than fishing causing it. But it is fly fishing keeping everything else at a minimum, so I’ve got no shame. I’m actually pretty proud that I’ve gotten to that point that I’m doing what I want to do no matter what kind of flack I hear from anyone else. Life’s too short to put fishing on the back burner for things you feel are less important. Maybe the better lesson there is figuring out what exactly is important.
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