gfirob
Well-known member
No.
At least under these conditions:
Yesterday I went out in the afternoon, hoping to catch some evening activity. Two other fishermen and the fly shop told me that nothing was happening on the river. I was not deterred.
I got to a favorite pool and began the fruitless process. It was hot.
I had worked my way about halfway up the pool when the tubers came. There were three of them, teenagers, and you could hear them coming about a half mile away, so I had all that time to build up my irritation. How these kids can enjoy the process of tubing with their butts hanging in water that is 58 degrees is beyond me, but evidently they do.
I maintained my “the river belongs to everybody” calm as they passed. As they always do, they called out happily “Catching any fish?”
I was reminded of an occasion when I was fly fishing for small mouth bass on the Shenandoah river in Virginia, when two young women came tubing down with a cooler of beer, both of them topless, enjoying the sun. With a big grin, one of them said “Catching any fish?” The river was fairly slow and it took quite a while for them to pass, as it happened.
About 10 minutes later another fisherman (with a spinning rig) was working his way downriver. “G*d d**n!” he said to me. “Did you see them girls?” His expression was shocked, displaying an extraordinary level of outrage and concern, as if he had passed a wrecked tanker truck dumping oil into the river. It was rural Virginia, after all and decorum is important, even on the river.
The Shenandoah at that point is a huge river and anyway, the girls didn’t bother the bass much, but the Gunpowder in Maryland is a fairly small, and these teenagers had put the fish down for a while, so I stopped to have some water and a granola bar and walked up the bank a ways. It was getting hotter. The greenbriers were in their full summer glory along the trail, repeatedly punishing my waders as I made my way upstream. I had a hard time finding a way back down the bank to the river.
When I finally did, there was mist rising on the water and it was getting hard to see the surface. Eventually, gradually, as evening got closer, I found myself on a long stretch of flats and the fish began to come up all around me. It was then that the deer flies appeared, competing for my attention with the mosquitos.
The mist was making it hard to see even the line on the water, and for all the rises, no fish was interested in what I was offering them. There were wind knots, tree snags, and underwater snags from courageous casts into a tangle of fallen trees. But at least it was clear that there were fish in the river and that was an improvement.
I was finally able to kill one of the deer flies which had kept landing on my casting hand (no small feat when you think about it) when I heard the echoing voices of men in a canoe coming down river. It was a blaze orange plastic job and the two of them were having a great time. It was a straight stretch of river so I could watch them coming for a long time, as the solace of my solitude melted away. “Catching any fish?” they asked with a friendly smile as they splashed by.
That was the last I saw of any rising fish for the rest of the evening. The giant orange canoe and the enthusiastic paddling had sent them all to go back to the furthest retreats in the river.
Of course, one of the other unpleasant side effects of not catching any fish, is that it gives you time to really focus and think about how your presentation sucks. I like to tell myself that practice only improves technique, but for sure, a rising level of irritation only diminishes concentration and patience, at least for a sore-head like me.
Eventually I gave up in defeat. I was unable to find the Zen patience with which to let it all roll off and enjoy the river. The only triumph I had was that I did not break my fly rod in two when I got back to the car.
And the thing is, I do this to relax.
At least under these conditions:
Yesterday I went out in the afternoon, hoping to catch some evening activity. Two other fishermen and the fly shop told me that nothing was happening on the river. I was not deterred.
I got to a favorite pool and began the fruitless process. It was hot.
I had worked my way about halfway up the pool when the tubers came. There were three of them, teenagers, and you could hear them coming about a half mile away, so I had all that time to build up my irritation. How these kids can enjoy the process of tubing with their butts hanging in water that is 58 degrees is beyond me, but evidently they do.
I maintained my “the river belongs to everybody” calm as they passed. As they always do, they called out happily “Catching any fish?”
I was reminded of an occasion when I was fly fishing for small mouth bass on the Shenandoah river in Virginia, when two young women came tubing down with a cooler of beer, both of them topless, enjoying the sun. With a big grin, one of them said “Catching any fish?” The river was fairly slow and it took quite a while for them to pass, as it happened.
About 10 minutes later another fisherman (with a spinning rig) was working his way downriver. “G*d d**n!” he said to me. “Did you see them girls?” His expression was shocked, displaying an extraordinary level of outrage and concern, as if he had passed a wrecked tanker truck dumping oil into the river. It was rural Virginia, after all and decorum is important, even on the river.
The Shenandoah at that point is a huge river and anyway, the girls didn’t bother the bass much, but the Gunpowder in Maryland is a fairly small, and these teenagers had put the fish down for a while, so I stopped to have some water and a granola bar and walked up the bank a ways. It was getting hotter. The greenbriers were in their full summer glory along the trail, repeatedly punishing my waders as I made my way upstream. I had a hard time finding a way back down the bank to the river.
When I finally did, there was mist rising on the water and it was getting hard to see the surface. Eventually, gradually, as evening got closer, I found myself on a long stretch of flats and the fish began to come up all around me. It was then that the deer flies appeared, competing for my attention with the mosquitos.
The mist was making it hard to see even the line on the water, and for all the rises, no fish was interested in what I was offering them. There were wind knots, tree snags, and underwater snags from courageous casts into a tangle of fallen trees. But at least it was clear that there were fish in the river and that was an improvement.
I was finally able to kill one of the deer flies which had kept landing on my casting hand (no small feat when you think about it) when I heard the echoing voices of men in a canoe coming down river. It was a blaze orange plastic job and the two of them were having a great time. It was a straight stretch of river so I could watch them coming for a long time, as the solace of my solitude melted away. “Catching any fish?” they asked with a friendly smile as they splashed by.
That was the last I saw of any rising fish for the rest of the evening. The giant orange canoe and the enthusiastic paddling had sent them all to go back to the furthest retreats in the river.
Of course, one of the other unpleasant side effects of not catching any fish, is that it gives you time to really focus and think about how your presentation sucks. I like to tell myself that practice only improves technique, but for sure, a rising level of irritation only diminishes concentration and patience, at least for a sore-head like me.
Eventually I gave up in defeat. I was unable to find the Zen patience with which to let it all roll off and enjoy the river. The only triumph I had was that I did not break my fly rod in two when I got back to the car.
And the thing is, I do this to relax.
