Watching the river cool a bit each morning… still too warm to swing a fly through the low flows of summer, but almost…almost…
Almost…
Author: SamF
Summer’s bounty
A flat ocean and the boat runs wide open to points south, skipping through little pockets of breeze where river valleys empty mountain air out to sea. We arrive where the flat ocean bottom drops off into a giant submarine canyon that runs nearly ashore. Its abyssal depths are hidden under the gently undulating surface of a windless ocean. The lines drag big bait near the bottom. The clicker ticks off as a fish picks up the bait and swims away with it – there are big fish way down there.
The Soft Beat of a Desert at Night
Long after sunset crosses the warm desert ground, the wind still rumbles through the sagebrush scraping up the songs written all through the heat of the day. After dark, the wind sings life into everything, as if rustling sticks and blowing dust were the soup of a cold winter day. Cricket songs punctuate the spaces between the waning breeze. Then, late in the evening, it all drops off. The wind falls to a whisper, the crickets part ways one by one, opening the door to the vast emptiness. Miles of quiet calm sneak across the mountains, float down to the desert floor, and stretch the edges of this place. I can’t hear the last breaths of air above my own thoughts anymore. Walking is now a noisy affair – each little grain of sand under foot crying out in the warm night air. Something has paused. I can’t stand to sit still now, some lonely discomfort from inside that shuns this dark, still openness. This is now a place of excruciating silence and aloneness. How can it be possible for such a big, open place to come to such a sudden, silent stop? Now, the dividing line between places within me and around me slowly dissolve.
I can’t stand to move, fearing that I might step on that one dry stick, sending a crack through the night, hurling me off some edge that gets conjured up somewhere out there. And on the edge of movement, a soft, cool breeze rustles across the tops of the brush, setting a distant cricket off in solo song to the soft beat of emptiness.
One last time?
From across the room, the sound comes though the door, along the face of the window and down from the ceiling. Rain sings along the street out front. The calla lilies out front fill with the water beading up along their silky white bloom. Across the hills, tendrils of fog waft upward from the forest in a great cycle of the water returning skyward. Today, this place is painted all green and grey – spring on hold while winter reaches out once more to soothe us maybe one last time before it all goes away into summer.
The forgotten American dream: patience
Mid-way through the afternoon the wind doesn’t show and the sun hangs across the streets in a timeless bit of perpetual Sunday laziness. I wonder down to the little taco stand where I know there’ll be few people and no waiting or impatient customers hurried on by something. These are the afternoons where the morning gets forgotten along the way. How things ended up here is unknown. For a couple of hours, there is nothing going on. Everything just slows to a crawl along the street. The cars are missing for a while, the kids have all gone inside for a break. Everything just seems to pause for a while. In this little slice of time the sun lights up the flat water on the bay, spraying slow sparkles of light through the afternoon. If I could stay right here, sipping my drink, patiently waiting for my tacos – the kind of patient wait that bathes me in calming comfort – I might never need anything else.
Visiting my therapist and losing the last bit of composure
I went to see my therapist today. I’m always anxious to go and always arrive on time. My therapist doesn’t speak to me. But if I listen, I hear all about the subject matter. I just have to show up on time. I usually have trouble hearing for the first part of the session, but once we are underway, I figure out the lesson of the day.
.
Another curious thing about my therapist who doesn’t speak to me, is that the location of our session is always changing. There is no office to go to. I usually have a vague idea where it’s at, but never quite know for sure. Oddly enough, I always seem to show up at the right place, even though the lesson of the day may not be what I was expecting. Today I was expecting to hear about enjoying life without expectations. That’s what I thought I heard early on at least. Then, I got the painful truth. Today’s work would focus on frustration and learning to not beat myself up too badly.
.
Today was about holding a sure thing in the palm of my hand only to see it slip away. But the irony of the session was that I never got to hold the thing in my hand – I was only led to believe that it would end up there. So I guess the original lesson of expectations still had some merit.
.
Long story, short – I went to the river today expecting little. Had my hopes elevated with the sight of splashing steelhead. I even managed to briefly hook one before it broke me clean off. These were big bright fish. Now, shaking, a bit frustrated, but determined, I swim my marabou prawn through the water again and just where it should be – BAM – the solid grab and another broken line. If I write anymore about my feelings over this whole affair, it would not be appropriate for viewing by younger folks and others offended by certain four letter words.
.
I have another appointment with my therapist late tomorrow afternoon. I already know the subject matter of the session.
Spring Wildflowers
A recent day afield…
Springtime on the River
A few photos from the past few days. With a setting like this, fickle fishing is not really a concern.
Thirty minutes of timeless water
I’m sitting next to the classroom window on the third floor. From this vantage point I can see how the wind is faring. I pretend to pay attention to the instructor, occasionally nodding in agreement at some unheard point of emphasis. By two o’clock, the breeze is waning, the flagging branches of the trees below show moments of stillness. Their branches are laden with white blossoms that seem to shine brighter in the lightening breeze. It looks really warm and green outside now.
The instructor cuts us loose a bit early. It’s one of those moments where the co-workers get ignored as they make plans to gather somewhere for an impromptu end-of-day social hour. “I’m going fishing,” I say as I pass them in a focused trot to the truck. These,too, are the moments when the bathroom urges are forced to wait. Along the way, I also realize there are too many stop signs and stoplights between here and the river. The iced coffee after lunch doesn’t help soothe the urgency of the situation.
Arriving at the little dirt pullout, suiting up is an efficient, well-rehearsed routine. In minutes, I’m crossing the old floodplain and at water’s edge. The breeze still comes in gentle waves. Not the incessant gusts of yesterday. I hope these are the last gasps of something going away for a long, long while.
The bugs come off sporadically. Pale morning duns are readily apparent and the occasional caddis buzz across the water and in the streamside willows. Still, though, after a couple minutes of careful observation no fish are seen. Regardless, this is one of those moments of arrival. Everything’s gone right, I’m on the water; now I can exhale and adapt to the pace of the river. Perhaps there are fish to be seen, but only after slowing down and focusing on the sights and sounds. The water moving by creates a rhythm. I listen for the chops in the rhythm that might indicate a fish. The little boil far downstream, after careful watching, is just the upwelling from a submerged boulder. These things take time to notice.
Two long hours are spent watching and waiting. A couple of fish are seen, but they do not reappear. The sun sinks lower behind the trees. The caddis begin to move away from the trees, gradually venturing farther across the river. The duns float by in the calmer edge water, their upright wings visible in the last rays of sun. As I’m watching I realize the wind has vanished. Somewhere along the way it played itself out unannounced. Then I see the gentle rings downstream along the edge in knee deep water. Then again, a head tips up followed a second later by a gentle tail movement guiding the large fish back down. All this happens with a soft kissing sound. The fish slides upward again, sipping in one of the duns. Towards midstream, another fish grabs a passing bug in a more audible manner, leaving a growing boil to float downstream.
It’s on.
The fish move into the knee deep margin water to softly sip in the drifting duns. They are big fish, given away by that interval of time between seeing a head then a tail as they porpoise up then down. The fish here are extremely spooky, coming into this shallow margin water for the easy pickings. My feet shuffling along the cobble bottom will put them down if not careful. Everything now comes down to a hunched-over whisper. These are the most difficult fish on the river and exactly what I’m after. Unfortunately, the otters decide this is their water to frolick in for the evening. Moving on downstream, near the tail of the run, more fish are working in the calf-deep water – their rises barely visible in this more turbulent shallow water.
The last light of day begins to fade. The first of summer’s crickets ratchet up their evening song. All of this lasts for maybe thirty minutes. But this is the one half hour that days are spent waiting for. Tomorrow, I think, will be even better.
Wind (a fishing report – kind of)
The oak woodlands are bright green with the beginnings of wildflower carpets across the sunlit hillsides. Along the river, the purple lupine and golden poppies celebrate the new sun. This could be the quintessential spring scene except for one thing: the wind. I saw the warnings – gusts up to 40 mph – on the heels of the storm passing to the east. Wind that’s in a hurry to race in a big counter-clockwise arc to fuel a storm over the Rockies. All the little places where I might find a little respite are even more trouble as the wind eddies and swirls unpredictably in the lee of the bankside trees.
On the water, the mayflies and caddis come off in good numbers. But the winged adults skitter along the water too quickly to offer easy pickin’s for the trout below. Swallows maneuver across the water, handling the wind with ease, grabbing up the bugs. Not a single trout can be seen on the surface. There’s no need, they can simply grab the bugs ascending in the water column and forgo the unpredictable surface fare. Normally, this would be an afternoon of steady surface-feeding fish. But not today. A few productive reaches are visited – all with the same wind-whipped setting. Instead, I take the time to explore two potential new sites. Good water to be had. But it will have to wait until another time. I’ll be here all week – and hopefully have a chance at a classic spring day drifting dry flies for large, surface feeding trout.
Shaken Rain 