Some Stay With You

 

Some fish stay with you even after you’ve taken down your rod, packed your stuff in the back of your vehicle, and wound your way back down Highway 67.  Some stay with you for a couple of weeks.  Maybe even longer.

 

I was working my way upstream at Deckers and having a pretty good evening.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How could it be a bad evening here, really, as the sun dipped below that ridge to the west to make for a warm summer evening in the fading light?  

 

I came to a bend in river.  The river arced out and around as I stood in something like the inner part and at the bottom of a parenthesis:   )

 

There were riffles that ran just above the top of the parenthesis, and the river calmed a little as it swept around the bend to me.

 

If you wait for just a bit, read the river, and envision the movement of fish on the edge of the current, you know where to cast.  I knew that I would probably have one chance.  The presentation had to be clean.  The fly needed to land on the seam toward the top of the parenthesis where the river still had some speed from the riffles but where it was slowing due to the gravelly bottom about five feet from the bank and about half way down the parenthesis.

 

I cast the #16 yellow Caddis to the seam.  I mended just a little and lifted the rod tip to get some of the line off the water.  The fly drifted out a little into the current.  And the Rainbow rose.