Friendship & Sanctuary

With it’s uncanny ability to reach across wide rivers with deft control and delicacy, it was a given that The Friendship Rod would journey to Sanctuary, and thus it has been done.

The river has lost that something extra that rain had offered, and so it flows as a thin, glowing pane of glass as it reflects the gorgeous clear blue skies of an incomparable summer day. August could do no finer.

Twenty-five years of memories flooded my thoughts as I waded, searched, and cast. Terrestrials fit the bill, and I hoped a reaction to the swift appearance of a substantial meal would lead to my reward. The beauty of the day could not be surpassed, but the trout had all but vacated the water after a week.

Today the fishing was superb, but the catching, well it seems the Red Gods had decreed that would not occur, not once, not in the least. Tom’s wondrous taper, so beautifully executed in John’s hands, laid flies both small and large as gently as the air itself, but if there was a trout hunkered there in that glorious reach of river, I cannot bear any witness to it.

At last, after working every lane of current, and every enticing nook behind some bit of cover, I surrendered to the beauty of the day, I clipped my fly on the frame of the stripping guide and enjoyed an hour to take a slow walk upriver, counting all of those memories made there. I watched the small pale mayflies drifting on that glassy surface, finding never a dimple or interruption to their passage. Indeed, it was a perfect day!