Memories

It has been one of those days in May, long hours spent sitting on river banks, feeling the sun bake the ache from my neck as I scan the water. The big Drakes have not appeared, and it is well into the afternoon.

Shadows have gathered tight to the far bank already, though it will be more than an hour before the sun drops behind the western ridgeline. Still, there are no flies. This is Nature’s way, and years of experience has proven it so. A day may seem perfect, ideal for a good hatch and rise of trout, yet something in the air says, no. Dozens of similar days have passed with joy, casting to wary risers at distance, placing the big duns on the current softly and watching them drift into those sweet bulges in the surface. What ingredient is missing? What special electricity makes life erupt one day, yet it’s twin fall silent?

Walking down river, I pick a familiar dimple in the grass and sit quietly until the sun passes over that ridge. Another hour passes there without any sign of life, and I rise to begin the long, slow walk back. All along the way I stop and gaze hard at the surface, dissecting each nuance in the current for some telltale variation which I do not see.

At last, I find myself seated below the little riffle and, amid my quiet reverie, I notice the shadows gathered there where the trees bundle close to the water, as evening comes wandering down the river valley.

Rising from the bank for the last time, I take a few steps upstream along the river’s edge, stopping to stare hard at the fan of current near the far bank. There is more light there, where the trees do not shade the water. There! It is so subtle I am not really sure I have seen it, a small, gentle ring. A wink, then nothing. I see nothing drifting on the surface, yet soon I see that tiny ring once more.

I have to hold the spinner pattern up to poke the tippet’s end through the eye, there where the light in the sky still glimmers to the south. With the knot fixed, I begin to stalk upstream, searching for the right angle to make my offering. One place will provide back cast clearance beneath the trees and allow my forward cast to shoot fully across the river. I find it as the shadows deepen.

Clouds have gathered, but there is still enough illumination to catch the sparkle of those wide spent wings as the fly settles at the top of the fan. A size 12 spinner offers some advantages. Memory does not recall how many casts were made, though the result of my last one lives forever!

That tiny, gentle ring replaces the silvery glint of evening light on those wings, and there is a brief pause before the shaft of split bamboo becomes a straining arch against the boil of water just across the river. My old Hardy ratchets loudly in the evening calm as the day becomes one of those bright memories, filled with magic!