Some things don't need to be touched

                                               

  “Left to right, 30 feet out.”  That’s usually when it starts for me.  My heart starts beating so loudly I swear the fish can hear it.  The blood rushes to my face and swallowing gets hard. It doesn’t matter though; my mouth went dry when I spotted the bugger so there’s nothing to swallow anyway. I try to concentrate on my breathing and making sure that the coils of line in my hands aren’t tangled since the last time I looked at them a half second ago.

  You can’t rush these things, that’s what I’ve been told. Somehow it’s hard to think about that when you have twenty plus pounds of beautiful golden Carp grubbing along the bottom just a short cast away from you.  This isn’t my first time and I’ve managed to get lucky and land a few big ones but the feeling never changes. That’s what keeps me coming back; it’s an intangible feeling a strange mixture of adrenaline and fear.

  I’m still keeping track of her as she moves along, Waiting for that moment when I can make a cast that won’t send her fleeing from the shallows for the safety of deeper water.  It’s already happened a couple times this morning so I’m aware of the game. The first time a pair of Mallards decided to land nearly on top of the fish I was stalking, leaving nothing but a cloud of mud where a happily tailing fish had been. The second time, well that was my fault. I had been so focused on my fish that I failed to notice the smaller male come along looking for love. When I made my cast he spooked at the movement or glare of the rod and took the bigger fish with him.

 My eyes scan the water quickly to make sure I don’t make that mistake again. No one else is around and I make a false cast to judge trajectory and distance, a second and I shoot some line on the forward cast plopping the fly two feet ahead and just to the right of her. She pauses for a moment and I think I’ve messed it up for sure. “Too damn close” I grumble to myself angrily. There isn’t enough time to beat myself up any more as she darts forward and slurps the fly. I can’t even set the hook before she does it herself bolting at the foreign object in her mouth.

  The little bit of extra line shoots through my fingers and then the guides putting her on the reel almost instantaneously.  “I wouldn’t touch that fish, the water here is really dirty”. I’m startled by the strangers voice behind me, I hadn’t even noticed them.  As I watch the backing melt off my reel I can’t help  but think that it doesn’t matter if I land her or not, I’ve already managed the most enjoyable part for me anyway. It’s the feeling of the cast , beating the shakes and the lump in my throat that really matter.

      For me it’s the things that you can’t touch that make fly fishing an addiction.

A Striper Bum in Trout country

    I grew up on the East Coast, Long Island to be exact. Although I started fly fishing when I was twelve, I never caught a Trout on a fly until I was almost seventeen. It wasn’t for lack of locales, more so it was a lack of desire. I started with Bass and Bluegill and quickly graduated to Bluefish and Stripers. Trout were more of an afterthought in my fishing ventures and in many ways still are. When I would chase Trout in my teenage years it was because they were the first species that the season opened for. I would ride the bus or hitchhike to whatever lake seemed to offer the most promise (read: most heavily stocked). With a spinning outfit a few Mepps Roostertails and maybe some bait I was set for the day.

    Fast forward several years and go clear across the country.  I got a job offer that brought me to California in January. I’d never been and well, it was freaking January in New York. Work kept me pretty busy the first couple of weeks and then suddenly I realized I was in the middle of the desert. I’d seen the beach out here but mention of fishing; much less fly fishing just brought confused looks from the locals. I may have even been asked if that was a new type of surfing or I could just be remembering poorly, it wouldn’t be the first time.

    Los Angeles quickly lost my interest and I soon found myself in the high Sierras packing mules and smack dab in some of the prettiest Trout country you ever saw.  It was hard to pass much of the water I was riding by, so naturally, I didn’t.  With an eight and a half foot five weight stuck in one of the panniers I made some, umm, extended stops. Purely to let the stock rest of course. Catching smallish wild fish on dries has a way of becoming addicting to nearly anyone and I still find myself laughing to the trees when a wild Brown misses the fly and leaps several times it’s body length out of the water.

 Although work, family and more have brought me back to L.A. I still find my way to the high country to fish for Trout on occasion. I don’t think that they will ever take the place of my beloved Stripers, they do make for a nice diversion here and there; mostly when the lakes seem completely devoid of any fish with stripes. So what if I may make a stop on the way home to sight fish to some Carp (my second favorite type of fishing). When I’m there I’m perfectly happy giving myself over to watching my fly bounce along the surface until it disappears with a flash of either buttery yellow or silver and rose.

                                           Till next time.