Give ‘Em Leaves and Fishes

Getting a few hours on the stream is always a pleasure, even when the challenges make others think you’re nuts for going fishing. (Secret is, being a bit nuts helps.) Friday was crystal clear and so was the water in the Clearfork, a branch of the Mohican River known mostly to fly fishers and not many others. The wind was howling like it was Montana. The wind-chill made me think of Colorado.
I started at one of my favorite spots where I usually pick up a trout or three, then move on to someplace else. For whatever reason known only to the trouts, there always seems to be a brownie or a rainbow hanging around that particular stretch. And if I fished there all day I wouldn’t get more than two or three fish; a lesson I learned a few years back.
Since there were no fish rising and no bugs in the air, I defied the astronomical odds and tied on a size 16 Adams in hopes that some unsuspecting fish might be looking up. I know, a trout gets 80% or 90% of its diet from below the surface. There’s just something about catching a fish on a dry fly …
It took about 15 minutes for me to come to my senses and switch to pheasant tail nymph that would drift a few inches below the surface. After nearly an hour of casting and not catching (one definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over, expecting different results), I began to wonder where my three fish had gone. I had been battling the wind, sort of letting it place my cast about every other toss. The result was hooking up with a leaf three out of four casts.
Further upstream is a gorgeous looking spot. Something you see in all the fly fishing magazines. The perfect bend. The perfect riffle leading to the perfect pool. In all my years of fishing this stretch of the river I’ve never caught a thing in that spot—yet I always give it a shot. It’s sort of like asking the prettiest girl in your high school class for a date. You know the answer before you ask, however, at least you’ve tried.
I studied the water as if I knew what I was looking for. The water was low, clear and choked with leaves. More leaves in the water than on the trees. I was about to head back to the car and another spot on the stream—but I just couldn’t. I bushwhacked my way up stream to get a half-decent angle on that good looking riffle that led to the perfect looking hole. On my third cast I hooked up with nice little brown trout. I’m not sure who was more surprised, me or the fish.
(Well, I thought, maybe she would have said yes had I asked her one more time some 45-odd years ago …)
I spent the rest of the windy afternoon working the spot as I never had in the past. Lots of leaves, too many for most fishers I suppose. And there was the occasional fish. All brownies with the largest stretched out to about 12 inches. There were the day dreams too—maybe the principal attraction of fly fishing. It lets you enter other worlds if only for a windy, blindingly bright afternoon in October in Ohio that will etch itself on the inside of your skull to become the daydream 20 years from now.