Desperation?

I found the East Branch free of ice just now, running clear through Hancock and into Crooked Eddy, and I saw something else I did not expect. A solitary fly fisher stood in the frigid water beside the riffles, swinging a fly down through the deepening flow.

It was a sunny twenty-nine degrees when I left the house, and the river gage just upriver from that stoic figure reads thirty-three as I write this. I would say that, to express that fellow’s chances of catching a trout, one would be most accurate to delve into the negative numbers. Is this a sign of desperation? I think not.

I could not recognize anything familiar at my distance, nor did the truck parked nearby stir any remembrance. Might he be a local? Perhaps, though I have seen anglers travel here in all seasons.

It might be he is no more expectant of a catch then I would be, but simply an angler who feels the need to say farewell to the river on this bright, ice-free day.

We will have snow tonight and more tomorrow, so this may well be the last day this year will allow a man to stand in the moving current and cast a fly, to bid farewell to bright water and it’s magic until springtime.

I too have waded these rivers beneath winter skies. If the Red Gods choose to offer a milder season, I will search for the warmest water on a day blessed with sunshine. Our tailwaters may even surrender a trout when water temperature rises to 37 or 38 degrees. I know that the possibility exists on that kind of day, though I certainly know the difference between possibility and likelihood. I choose to wander rivers on many days when the best I will carry from the river will be contentment; appreciation for a few hours of solitude in one of my favorite places.