Lower Poudre, 7/12/10

Today was almost a day full of losses.  But not quite.

I had a rough day at work.  That qualifies as a loss, as in hours of lost living that I'll never get back.  I lost patience.  I lost fully functioning and productive brain cells.  I lost enthusiasm.  Nearly lost my mind entirely.

That's all completely unimportant, however.  After all, it's only work.  The real losses started to pile up later.  As the sun began it's gradual descent, I couldn't shake the euphoria from the weekend's successful brook trout excursion and a newfound technique that I'm sure is old hat to many, but quite unique for me.  I've never really spent too much time fishing two-fly rigs before, save for some double-nymphing that I played around with earlier in the spring.  It's normally enough for me to focus on one dry fly.  The double dry rig from the weekend, however, got me thinking that it's probably a good thing for me to keep mastering.  A lot of the blogs I follow seem to treat the technique as second-nature.  Like any good student, I learn by observation and emulation.  So I kept after it today.

Which brings me back to the first loss.  I opened up the case to my eight-foot five weight and found exactly one half of a fly rod.  One half.  I think there was supposed to be a second half in there too, but it's gone.  No idea where.  Searched high and low.  Lost temper.

After calming myself following a brief period of hyperventilating, I reached for my other fly rod.  You all know the one.  I wrote about it previously, I think.  It used to be nine feet, but it's now only about eight and a half, thanks to a broken rod tip.  How big a difference could a tip make, right?

I got to the river and prepared to make the best of an increasingly frustrating chain of events.  I reached in the fly box and pulled out a para-caddis pattern that doubles as a dry fly and an indicator.  I promptly hooked myself in the thumb, frantically pulled it out, and summarily dropped it in the river.  Lost about a half hour's worth of time spent at the tying table (hey, it's a hard pattern for me).  Nearly lost mind.

After all these losses, I probably should have simply cut them and gone home.  Nah.  One last try.

A few chunky little rainbows kept the day from being a total loss, and kept me from feeling like a total loser.  Thank God for this beautiful hobby of mine.

The flies of the day were the para-caddis on the surface and smallish (#18) pheasant tail nymphs trailing below, for those of you interested in that sort of intel.  Fish took both of them consistently.  The water clarity is good and the flow is manageable in most spots, although the far bank is still running awfully heavy.

Also, I'll be looking for a decent, budget-conscious fly rod.  Recommendations will be greatly appreciated.