Promise

Yesterday morning brought the promise of a new day. After a great practice on Friday night, I was confident my soccer team would would be a bit more competitive than previous weeks games...we were, we only lost 6-1, which is better than the 2 prior games as they were shutouts. I don't mind the kids losing the game as I really believe the activity should be more about learning and fun at this age. What I do mind is when the kids give up on themselves. Getting drubbed 3 weeks in a row will do that to you...it did it to me. I was in a fairly foul mood after our game and, after a lazy afternoon, turned to the water for relief.

Again, everything looked promising as I pulled into a favorite spot for some dry fly therapy. An empty stretch, higher water than in recent weeks and bugs in the air. Perhaps I should have taken notice that there were virtually no rising fish. Oh well, let's do some prospecting. After all, doesn't the Farmington have something line 3000 or 4000 fish per mile?

The bugs that were around were tiny, so I decided to tie on a larger attractor and cast blind to on the foam lines and to other areas that looked good. Let's blame the rust that had built up on my reflexes for not having been on the water in almost 4 weeks as I missed takes for about an hour. Fish were not actively rising however, they did make themselves known if the meal looked attractive enough for their effort. I walked up an down this pool for quite awhile and could not buy a hook set. As it was about 40 minutes from dark, I decided to walk downstream and cast to the tail of some slightly faster water.

It was in this location that I had my Captain Ahab moment ( hour really ). I noticed a couple of fish steadily rising to the far bank near a protruding tree limb. I cast to this location for the better part of 45 minutes, missing take after take. I truly thought I would have put these fish down after the first few misses however, they must have been very confident in my lack of ability at that moment as they kept rising and refusing my offerings. Rather than walk away, I let the Irish in me prevail and I stayed and tortured myself. All things considered, it could have been worse. This was a good opportunity to practice casting to a tight area and working on good drifts. Once I decided to move upstream, things went from bad to wet. I locked my ankle between a couple good rocks and was in water over my waders before I knew it. I regained my balance, after a course of obscenities and began to walk again only to take another header that was just as deep as the first. Soaked, I had to laugh at the mojo of the day being totally off and, as I took stock of the situation, decided to call it a day before I tempted fate one to many times.

For me, this is one of the many joys of fishing. No matter how slow the fishing or how bad the tumble, I have never walked back to my car in a worse frame of mind than when I began my journey.