It’s the futile things of fly fishing I enjoy the most. Like taking the can’ts or shouldn’ts of a situation and turning them into been-there’s and done-that’s. This for me is fly fishing; a genuine battle of conceptual logic verses physical reality. Waiving a stick in the air with feathers that some how produces fish. I don’t know how that works actually I do a little, I just care that it does. Then, when the concept out wins the reality- well there’s no other natural high like it.
Lately my concepts have been really put to the test. Let me list in short some of my most recent concept vs reality fails on the water.
Concept: “I’m tall enough to wade through this pool without getting water down my chest waders.”
Reality: Sub 57° weather river water down my drawers.
Concept: “It’s not too windy to fly fish today.”
Reality: A size 6 flying cat smack to the hand when headed for my face. You’ll thank yourself later if you crush the barbs now.
Concept: “I know I can find that fly I just bull whipped into my back cast behind those bushes. I know it! Let’s go look.”
Reality: 20 minutes tying said fly, plus 40 minutes looking for said fly, equalling in 1 hour of life lost. (There has to be some kind of sick 1/3 : 2/3 ratio of fly tying to searching ratio in there somewhere.)
Now, I can continue to list fishing fails here but it’s the wins we care about. Like, how in order to avoid filling the aforementioned waders with another dousing of water on the same trip- I recovered a fly I dropped tying on in chest high water with the tip section of my fly rod. Not once but twice! Now, that maybe not amazing for you but it meant the world to me in the moment. Yes, yes, I just said “you had to be there.” At any rate there was one thing that happened that was completely amazing; the crawfish I found. I found it in the mouth of a small bass.
I had never experienced this kind of @diefische zen, circle-of-life moment before, but I thought it was pretty darn neat. The fail here comes into to play that when I released the little Guadalupe bass in the water- he lost his lunch. Maybe he thought I needed it more than he did. Regardless, I felt pretty bad about. So I picked it up and took a picture anyway.
And then I continued to waive my feathers and stick in the air. Winning… Good times.
Fish On!
Anthony
So when are we gonna fish the San Marcos river???
We really do need to plan something and the San Marcos is one I haven’t hit yet. Let’s figure out a plan as the weather warms?
“Waiving a stick in the air with feathers” -awesome analogy, made me chuckle
Using your rod tip to retrieve a fly- pretty damn impressive, I have failed doing this on more than one occasion…of course I generally fish a 0 weight so if ANY current is present I’d risk breaking my rod tip.
Jaz, I’m generally dumb enough to try anything once. But I the back of my mind I’m praying “don’t slip/break/fall/fail” over and over until complete. The sad part is if it works out – I’m almost sure to do it again. Ha