After the fun of fly tying, I had to go try them out, right?

It worked.

Today was not quite as superlative a day of fishing as yesterday, but didn’t miss by much. I revisited a prime hole, and spent the better part of an hour pulling cutts and brookies out from under the huge logs the line the back of this creek bend. One fish was amusing clever. I had moved in on the side to reach the very back of the bend, thinking that the real big fish must be lurking back there. One took my fly with a spectacular leap, well clear of the water, zigged hard, and then zagged back under a log, wrapped my tippet around a stick, and was gone. I was left comicaly yarding on my rod, which might as well have been anchored to the titanic. After a minute of swatting in different directions and moving around, I had to admit defeat, retract the rod, and break the tippet.

Good thing I’m finding typing amusing, as this stream eats flies. Lost three yesterday, and three again today. I made a few more this evening, this is my favorite.

Eventually I’ll read a full book and figure out how to do it right.  Or perhaps not, especially if I keep being amused tying and catching fish.

The days catch was once again about evenly split between cutts and brookies, and after about 30 fish over two days, I’m willing to estimate that in this creek, brookies are gram for gram about 3 standard deviations fiercer when on the hook.  There were three or four tiny little 3-4″ brookies out of the aforementioned pool that just exploded onto the line and fought with every scale right until I got them in hand.  They, moreso than the handful of 8-10 inchers I caught this weekend, tickled me and earned my respect.  May they grow fat in such a beautiful home.

It was the kind of weekend that almost makes me consider quitting fishing for the season, as I just don’t see it getting any better.  Fortunately I know better: fishing holds it core of unpredictability, and the publicly innocuous things merit sublimity on par with anything else.  This last I need to hold close to the front of my mind, there have been many moments this summer that have seemed hard to top.  Smelling the roses and taking an hour to move 300 meters upstream was, this weekend, just what I needed to slow things down.

Tomorrow: Monday.  This coming weekend: The MESSS, featuring 50+ miles of road biking and 25 miles of running.  I haven’t ridden a road bike in ??, and the 8 miles I ran earlier this year hurt far out of all proportion.  Good thing I’ve done zero running or road biking thus far in preparation.  Next Saturday is going to huurrt.