Dawn Patrol

I know it’s only early June, though considering so few days this stolen season has allowed me the caress of bright water, forgive me to have lost some sense of timing.

It is hot. The flows barely dampen the toes of my boots, and rain? Well, that seems another broken promise. I simply could not suffer a few more hours under that bright sun baking the stones beneath my feet.

Six o’clock, and the Leonard and I are stalking…

Whom might I find first off, but a single rise in the middle of the river. Visual recon betrayed a lone Drake drifting out there. These past two weeks, there have been a few, but the trout of my acquaintance have been cruising shallow water, busting those big wiggling nymphs just beneath the surface when one gets close enough. I have not seen a dun, cripple, or anything even partially on the surface been taken; not mine nor Nature’s. I guess the trout miss the good old days as much as I.

I tied on a smaller 100-Year Drake, size Ten, 1X Long, and I continued the stalk. I enjoyed the coolness of the morning mist, the soft relief from the closeness of the air in town and, every once in a while, I saw a lone drake drifting.

I was scrutinizing one particular reach, searching for any movement which might betray a trout up and looking, and there it was – a slow, soft rise where a drake had been drifting! I was too close to my shore, so I had to close inches at a time, easing upstream and angling away. God, it seemed like an hour to get in position, moving without a trace.

Finally, I had enough space for a back cast, and I made my first pitch, a few feet upstream where the rise had been, for I know searchers usually move. The second cast was more tense, as I set it down two or three further above where I had seen the natural disappear, and there he was, that big head gliding barely from the water to the air, opening his mouth, and softly sucking my fly in…

The spring was coiled too tight. In my soul I know how slowly a big wild brownie can take a drifting dun, it takes time, a moment in real time, but eons in the psyche of an angler starved of that magic. Too tight, and that spring tripped early. I snatched that fly right out of his mouth. I felt him, and he felt me and vanished.