Friday Classic: Persistence

The line stopped in the tea colored water. A quick head shake and the trout headed up stream. Minutes later we had a gorgeous brown at our feet. The sun was just coming over the horizon, we began fishing only moments earlier. Swollen and slightly off color, we thought the stream would be tough to fish. Our expectations were turned on their head in a hurry. But three hours later we hadn’t felt another tug.

My brother had come out West to visit and fish for a couple weeks. He hit the tail end of run off and for the first few days he didn’t have much luck. I hoped this day would prove differently. But with the sun now high and our hopes low, we were close to packing it in. I wanted my brother to fish one more run. I also asked him if he would be willing to tie on a double nymph rig. After fishing all morning, throwing nearly everything in the box with little to show for it, he was skeptical of my request.

In the end he was willing to give it a shot and he slowly worked into position. On his second or third cast the indicator disappeared and a toilet bowl swirl followed his hook set. A battle ensured that quite frankly I didn’t think he was going to win. Keeping his cool, my brother artfully worked the fish and successfully landed an oversized rainbow. It was the kind of fish that changes a day, heck a trip.

After savoring the moment he stepped back into the run and proceeded to catch four more chunky fish in short succession. We had found the fish and were experiencing something special. After the 5th fish my brother turned to me and said “oh do you want to have a cast?” He was in the moment and had needed those fish, I was happy for him to catch fish until he was satiated.