To hell with summer, the best time right now is 1:00 pm standing waist deep on the far side, hoping for that elusive early afternoon grab time. If we’re lucky the wind will tail off at sunset after a painful, frustrating, almost enraging wait for a quiet evening after a late afternoon lull.
That damned wind….
But then it all goes away, the light fades and the river erupts to life in a cacaphony of frogs, crickets, skittering bats, bears crashing somewhere off in the black woods and splashing fish.
Teeming.
Stand, listen and it all becomes a crazy, pulsing choir sung at some hipster-gone-bad church on the river where god’s nothing more than snot-slick cobblestone … and just as it all seeps into the inky blackness of night, the silver flash of adult steelhead can barely be seen arcing through the once quiet water.
At least that’s the way I remember it.
