Earn the Daylight
I had one of those moments the other day on the water. You know, when everything lines up 'perfectly'. The wind, the sun, the clouds, the temperature of the air, the water - rushing against your bare legs - the green in the trees, the blue in the water. The bit of bugs hatching - not so much that you can't get yours taken, but enough to turn the fish on - those moments.
This moment legitimately re-awakened the inspiration for this project.
The type of moment that makes you want to share it with others. To write again. To capture it and bottle it up somehow. To take a picture and a deep breath. To revisit it.
"Come back," the river whispers.
Days and weeks later I've been attempting to replicate it! Yearning for that cool clear water rushing between my toes, as I see the Taker rise for another tiny bug trickling through the pass off the edge of fallen timber.
I stand there with my kayak bound around my waste, trying to keep my footing in the slippery rocks. I'm planted on a ledge above a plunge pool, and the grippy sand amidst the rocks is my sure-footed friend.
It is a sunny day, but the clouds offer welcome respite from the blaring rays. The cooler air suspended above the water accomplishes the same. It's not like I need to look around to take all this in - it's just happening. I paddled upstream to this spot, caught one or two little rainbows and decided to stay a while.
I don't know what to call it other than the 'essence' of the day. Your state of mind
f e e l s right. You've made the effort to wade through the reasons why you shouldn't go fishing... why you can't go fishing. That you're too busy, too many chores to do. Things around the house; people to call...
But then you got your shit done and earned the daylight.
And for the ones you didn't get done, you go fishing anyway. Experiencing the outdoors on a day like this is a matter of what's important vs. what's urgent.
This is important. This is what not-taking-your-life,-liberty-and-happiness-for-granted feels like. Now that you're here, you feel the lightness of the world arriving to greet you with every stroke of your paddle and wisp of the line through the air,
Not an "escape", so much as "enjoyment'', in a real and pure sense.
go fishing anyway
I had abandoned the nymphs altogether, at least for a little while. I love the versatility of a dry dropper as much as the next guy, but the nymphs tugging on my line in the air, and on my dry in the current, just - sometimes - sometimes I'm just over it. When my leader straightens out at the end of my cast, and so subtly lays the prickly dry on the tension of the water, I don't want it pulled under in the slightest by more tippet and tungsten. There's fish rising here, a rare occasion on my home tailwater, and I just need to h a v e them. I crave the simplicity of the (dare I say) truest form of the sport... "The Original Intent"; throwing a fly line with mass and weight, to deliver a fly with none.
earn the daylight
The river is flowing across my body; upstream on my right, downstream on my left. And there is a downed tree in the water, pointing towards me, bunched up underneath with all the leaves, sticks, and BudLights(TM) from over the years acting as a little wall, pushing the water out towards me. But as I mentioned I'm standing on a ledge of rocks myself. My ledge points towards the tree, and in the gap between the water funnels through. This fast strip of water immediately swirls open into the deeper pool below me, and slows down.
The water is pretty clear. A release of water from the dam the night before had cleared out the mud and stain, so I'm positioned well off my target, making long casts.
(As it's Father's Day while I write this, and I lost mine when I was 18, I must mention I'm using his old Fenwick 8' 6wt HMG Graphite during this outing. Pictured at the start of this post.)
Finally that summer afternoon, after just the right cast and all the other 'just rights', I see a trout begin his dart, out and up, at my just-landed dry.
I placed it just slightly upstream at the start of the faster water, and it was floating down towards where the fish were rising. It was one of those moments if you were a filmmaker that you would want to be right over my shoulder, with the barrel of the lens pointed down my arm and following the rod, as if to make the viewer not just see it, but f e e l this happen.
In the split second of seeing the now apparent fish shoot up to greet my fly I thought "now this is beautiful."