For lack of a better way to put it, life's been full of a lot of garbage over the past month. In retrospect, it's really a shame, because I allowed the garbage to get in the way of one of the few things that keeps my armor securely in place in my daily effort to keep the wolves of life at bay. I've been doing my best for the past month to clean house (figuratively) and keep my head above water, exerting all the willpower I can muster to make smart decisions in confronting monsters that keep rearing their heads, and I'm happy to report that many of them have either been beaten into submission or quarantined into manageable quantities. Still, I have to confess to an inexplicable loss of enthusiasm for the stream and the tying bench over the past several weeks.
Sometime during this morning's church service, an old friend left a voice mail for me. He's one of the very few loyal followers of this blog, and probably the only follower who isn't as obsessed and crazy as I am about fly fishing. Someday I'll convert him, but that's another story. In any event, he mentioned that he stopped by the Flywriter home page and found that nothing had changed for over a month. As funny as it may sound, those who know me best quite rightly wonder if something's out of whack when I don't report anything new from the fly fishing front more often than every thirty days.
So this one's for you, JDH. Thanks for the motivation!
There was nothing spectacular about today's quick outing. I got to the river late this afternoon, relieved to find the water in decent condition and grateful that all the other anglers who have been crowding this particular stretch of river as of late seemingly had something better to do on a cool, gloomy Sunday evening. While the water is no longer crystal clear, and likely won't be for a few months now, it's still very fishable. The insect life was pretty thin, and nothing was showing on the surface at all, so I turned to some big, heavy stone flies to start. After an hour in slow deep runs with no response from the trout, I scouted out a nice shallow riffle and started slinging pheasant tail nymphs. I had to work pretty hard for awhile, but I finally did coax a couple of nice little browns to the net. The second one was actually pretty stout, working his way into some fast water and making an exciting downstream run before I steered him to the shallows.
Some sanity always comes back to me when I make the time to do what I love. Cleaning up life's messes has its own rewards, but I've had enough cleaning up for awhile. Creating some new memories - that's the sweet stuff in life! Today was a chance to get back on track. No trophy fish, no frenzy of activity. Just some much needed solitude and the chance to sweep some of the garbage aside for a couple of hours. And everything felt right again.
Game on (again)...
The Flywriter
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