DNF

Did not fish, a simple, factual designation that has applied all too frequently to recent days. It is after eight on a lovely Catskill Summer morning, one that I hoped to join one of my best friends in a hunt for a wide flanked brownie or two, and I am waiting for the electrician.

It is hard for me to give up a day on the river, something I had to do for most of my life. These days, I sometimes take for granted that, if it’s a weekday, I am going to be fishing. I paid enough years of dues, so now is my time to explore my passion for dry flies and difficult trout. Homeowner responsibilities have gotten in the way.

I did sneak out for one morning last week, and it turned out I was very glad that I did.

I ran into a couple of exceptionally fine wild brown trout, very quietly going about their own morning hunts for a meal. I had fished a pretty good reach of water without really noting any activity until my sixth sense kicked in upon the sight of a touch of motion in the current. It wasn’t much and could easily have been nothing but one of the river’s usual little hydraulic reactions to rocks and moving water, but it did get those hairs on the back of my neck twitching.

The cast had to touch the cover, and when it did and drifted ever so slowly for maybe half a foot, there was the take I had been looking for. Oh man, did that fish want to tie me up and break me off immediately, and it seemed for a long moment like he was going to succeed. We had that kind of standoff going, my rod loaded up and throbbing with energy without an inch of line moving one way or the other. This time, my pressure won the initial tug of war, and I got him a foot away from his sanctuary. I worked the rod down and to the side and turned his head a little more, and when he reversed direction, I was quicker. It was a long, hard battle after that, but it kept going my way. Two-foot fish are like that.

When he was unhooked and released, I took a breath and a swig of water. Too bad I didn’t have a dram of single malt to toast him, but that kind of celebration is made for the den after fishing, not on the river.

It wasn’t too many casts after I resumed the hunt that I connected with one of that brownie’s competitors. He rose once in a current line just off the edge of the bank, and I started casting gently a couple of feet upstream of his riseform. With no response, I figured him for a mover, and gradually expanded the scope of my casting, first upstream in that same line of drift, and then back down and closer to the edge. He took the fly with a subtle spurt of spray, and we started in. He was more the brash runner when he felt the hook, though he thought too late about turning back toward cover. By then I had him out into the river enough that I managed to check his runs for trouble. He was a beautiful brownie, just slightly smaller than his fellow hunter.