Stalking Dreams

It is a summer’s morn, and the river slides silently past my feet. It takes time, this walking upstream in the quiet hours. I must push no wake before me and remain watchful lest I miss the clue that will make the day.

Easing toward a shoreline I pause and listen, for the mist obscures the surface. With patience, it begins to move with the warming air, and I catch glimpses of familiar bits of cover. It is then that my ears capture the subtle plop that means a trout is hunting too. I watch the film passing around me, for some mornings there are spinners adrift, and I must find them to know.

Per chance a cruiser has chosen the same haunt as I! The moving specter of the mist hides him well from my searching eyes if that is so. I wait as the light grows from a thin glowing rim above the mountain.

On those days when I can track the subtle rings of a cruising trout, I will choose a fly and play that game. The rules are plain: one rise, one cast, gentle and quick before he meanders away from the vanishing rings. More than one cast risks everything, for the mist hides all the other subtle clues to his direction!

Some mornings there are no rings to be found, and then, when the suns burns away the mist the nature of the hunt changes. Now I can see up, down and across the river, stalk what evidence of life should appear; and now there are choices to be made. Spinner, dun, ant or beetle? The height of the sun and how well it streams through the clouds and high fog help make my decision. If the coolness and the moisture has left the air, a terrestrial is more likely, more so if the breeze rises.

As the sun and it’s daylight takes full command, the character of the hunt changes. Rises are less likely, and the subtlest of movements will draw casts to the nearby cover. There! The cane arches and the fly is dropped softly above the submerged log, my hand flicking gentle turns of line upstream to lengthen the drift. The drama comes as the vortex forms – he is moving to the fly!

I live for the take, nerves ragged as the point of his arrow nears the fly, and finally, the dimple. Every muscle, every nerve tenses then, but I must hold. Half a breath and then the lithe shaft rises into that blissful arc!