Tag: rivers

What is it?

~ SamF ~ Leave a comment
Imitating no particular creature, pieces of fur and feather wrapped around a hook explode to life when in moving water.
Imitating no particular creature, pieces of fur and feather wrapped around a hook explode to life when in moving water.

What is it about moving water that draws us from afar?  Makes us skip out of work?  Entrances and enthralls us?  Excites us and soothes us?  From the tiniest trickle to the worlds largest rivers, we, as a species, seem drawn to moving water.  Whether for its life-giving, thirst-quenching sustenance, spiritual renewal, adrenaline rushes or simple relaxation,  I can think of no place where it can all happen.

For those of us who find an angling connection to moving water, there is that anticipation, excitement and hope that precedes each trip.  Even though we go to the same places maybe; we know full well that each time reveals an entirely new place.  Maybe only subtly different than the last time, beckoning close inspection.  Or, a changed riverscape, such as after a freshet or even a flood.  Always, there is an opportunity of discovery, of finding something new and different – perhaps overlooked during the last visit.

So, many of us get giddy with excitement about going to the same old places, fishing the same old water and hoping for the same old fish.  Because we know, deep down, that this time it will be completely different.

Searching for the Rhythm of the Eel

~ SamF ~ Leave a comment

The river swings away from the highway for a few miles, winding through tall trees and underneath moss-covered everything.  Standing halfway through the run, bitter cold of morning stinging my fingers, I notice the water slows to a gentle sound – more like soft voice than the chatter up top in the riffle.  Here the river is in slow motion it seems.  Someone forgot to turn the LP speed up and it all comes to a wonderful, easy pace.  Once a rhythm is established in the cast-swing-step dance, this place becomes very big.  Each tiny step swims the fly into a whole new world of water.  This morning, the water is perfectly slate green colored with the first rays of sun casting beams through the redwood boughs onto the water. Spotlights.  An early grab on the giant marabou prawn is an adrenaline rush and every subsequent cast becomes more intense – this is the ONE.

Climbing back up to the bank, looking at the clock in my truck and realizing that nearly three hours had passed on that one run… “I hardly had enough time to even think.  I didn’t quite fish the bottom as well as I could have.  I should have…”  Well these are the things that signify success beyond anything.  A fish to hand is always nice but success can be found in other, perhaps more deeply satisfying, ways.

Where one piece of water is pleasant and time gets lost, another piece becomes more challenging.  The water is too deep, too slow, too fast, too much of this or needing more of that. Time becomes more apparent, something potentially wasted, time to move on.  Impatience is like sour milk – toss it out and start fresh. So we go to new places. Still, we go to those places again and again just to make sure.  Or maybe we’re looking to find that patience in all the wrong places so when we come to the right place again, everything will be just as it is and fall effortlessly into place. Late in the day, sun casting shadows and light across everything, I find the proper water again.  Still, nothing on the grab, just patience and rhythm.

To be continued…