The bugs pelt the water in sheets, like winged sleet on every fresh breeze, prompting a feed that feels lewd to me, somehow indecent.
I grinned, expecting a punchline, but he’d said all he had to say. The sound of outbound flyline singing through the guides was his only response.
I hadn’t missed it exactly, but hot damn is it good to be sight fishing again.
You’d damn near talked yourself into it too. You almost got yourself to believe that an unvarnished skunking, wasn’t so bad, that it wouldn’t rankle until your next time out, that it wasn’t like finding coal in your Christmas stocking.
He’s down there. That’s beyond dispute, an open secret. Any fool can look at that deep, dark, juicy run and know, without further evidence, that it holds fish… lots of fish… big, fat, healthy fish. The only question, really, is what you’re going to do with that information once those fish have ignored your, Read More
It was the year’s first post-work outing. With the equinox behind us and daylight savings time tacking an extra hour onto the evenings, there was finally enough afternoon sunlight to give it a go… and not a day too soon.
It all starts innocently enough. Sundrenched summer afternoons wiled away beside childhood rivers. A stringer of bluegill here, maybe a bass from the frog water there. Sometimes you crawl through the rhododendrons looking for brookies. You’re with friends; everyone gripped by the same hopeful sense of adventure. Who knows what lurks below the surface?, Read More
Sips are great, those matter-of-fact top water takes – no wasted motion, no unnecessary airtime. They’re discreet, business-like and well-mannered. You can almost imagine a trout dabbing his lips with a napkin after a sip. Slurps are fun too, partly because they seem so mischievous, like opening a trapdoor under a pizza. The bug, Read More
Once, as a young boy, I asked my father to race me from his office to his car. The instant he said no, I was struck by a startling realization. Dad never ran, at least not spontaneously or without purpose. Nor for that matter did any of the grown-ups in my life. It, Read More
“Hump had taken a helluva beating, but the kids kept calling for more fish. I tried to talk him out of it. ‘Just look at yourself’, I said. ‘Get back in the box… you’re through, you’ve done enough’. But there was no talking to him.” – Specialist Adams, Parachute Squadron “Did Copeland ask too much, Read More