One Small Thing

Two things came together last night at dusk at … well, let’s just call it a “local fishery.”  I had the hole to myself and a nice caddis hatch hovered above the water at 7:00 p.m.  I watched the fish behavior change as the caddis began flitting and flickering across the water.  I also watched as my dead-drifting Elk Hair Caddis drew no interest from the browns and rainbows I saw in the pool below. I needed just one small thing …

 

It was probably my third cast to the hole when I went to mend my line and the caddis skittered and skated on the seam.  And the fish rose to it.  He didn’t strike.  But he reminded me what I knew but had forgotten until that moment.  One small thing.  Skate.  

 

For the next 30 minutes I worked the deep pool and had five hook-ups.  Even though the fish were not steadily rising at the wave of caddis during the hatch, they were rising to my size 18 Elk Hair I had tied on.  I didn’t need to change to a different spot on the river.  I didn’t need to swap out flies.  I needed to add one twitch to the tip of my rod, one little tug on the line, to make the fly skitter and skate on the surface.  Fish that weren’t interested before and that weren’t rising too dramatically anyway, all of a sudden had interest.  

 

One small thing.