It is a bit warmer this morning, so when the light comes up, I do not expect a blanket of frost. The sun is expected to continue, but the day will be noticeably cooler, even if the wind lies down as predicted.
The week has been beautiful, with brilliant sunshine, the mountainsides aflame, but the scene belies the chill, the truth that standing a few minutes in the current tells. River temperature has hovered in the forties, and yesterday the peak quietly failed to touch fifty degrees.
I found one brief appearance, a single fish cruising and taking something three or four times over perhaps ten minutes time. By the time I recognized the soft rise amid the wind tossed surface with it’s flotilla of leaves, and sent my casts that way, he was already gone. Chasing dreams…
The sun crests the ridgeline early, and as the shade marched across the river I shielded my eyes from the brilliant orb to watch the flow. There were mayflies there, olives, and in good numbers, yet they sailed placidly downstream out of sight until flight lifted them into the air. My suspicion is that there are very few trout in the pool this fall.
I count that an improvement, the river having been ravaged by terrible droughts, continued on through winter’s icy grip, during the previous two years. There were no trout there during those autumns, and no mayflies that I could count.
Thinking, as opposed to feeling, I considered to let yesterday afternoon’s search stand as the final installment, the last moments of a dry fly season cut short in it’s beginning that more than made it up through the glory of summer. Feeling sometimes champions hope and beauty over the cold observation and conclusions of thinking. Hail to the champions!
It is still early, so I have the luxury of time this morning. I will tie a couple of flies that I wanted yesterday. I believe the fly line on that certain vintage LRH is due for a cleaning, and likely a new tippet. I know which rod I will carry, for it is the one I carried first when I glimpsed the spring, the one that brought me to find the fulfillment of hope with beauty to begin this lovely late week in October.
If this is to be the last day of my dry fly season, I will meet it with a smile. I will carry it through the next five months in pursuit of greeting another spring.
