Fishless Saturday

Jen and I woke up early this morning and turned on the weather channel. It looked like there was little chance of bad weather till the evening so we threw our fly fishing gear in the truck and took off.

I broke from my usual morning trouting routine of Mountain Dew and Snickers and instead had a "Nature Bar" and cheap Super America iced coffee...and that was "my bad" for changing the morning ritual, as our day went fishless.

We arrived at the chosen river a little further south then there was water. Damn maps, they should know where the river has water and where it is just a dry rock bed. We headed north up the "river" about eight miles where we actually saw moving water, but it was so overgrown that the weeds were at least a foot to two feet taller then myself (that's about three to four feet taller then Jen, if you're keeping track of her). After a couple of unsuccessful approaches, we retreated back to the truck to try a third spot.

This time it looked more promising, with trout regulation postings and an actual mowed foot path to follow. Well after trying several of the trails that came to the river, there was not really "great" water nor a way to get down to it. We would step off of the trail to approach the river only to find steep eight to fifteen foot drops. Again, we retreated to the truck.

Now this early in the morning, I had already flicked the bird at some 16-year-old punk for his crappy driving decisions, we had been rejected by the river gods several times, Jen injured her thumb (blood and all), the humidity was high, and it had already cracked 75 degrees and it was only 10:30am. Yes, such fun we are having. At least the scenery was nice.

On our 4th approach we found an access point to the river that A) had water in the river, and B) had not been overgrown. So this is looking awesome at this point in our day, right? We get down to the river, Jen is using my 8.5' Sage 3-wt, and I have my 7' 4-wt bamboo rod, and we are ready for some trout. We fished all the usual riffles, bends, and pools without success. In fact the whole entire time we were on this beautiful little stretch, we saw only a shadow of one, count it again, ONE fish. And since it was only the shadow I saw, I am not sure what kind of fish it was. It was warming up, our patience had worn thin, and the lack of seeing anything getting better, we pulled the plug. We did see a neat little hawk up in a tree in front of us and humming bird inches above one bend in the river, but that was pretty much the extent of seeing anything wild along this water.

We changed out of our waders, hopped in the truck and headed for Cabela's to replace my blown out Thermarest and get Jen an upgraded sleeping bag for the fall adventures. Sometimes, I guess, going fishing is going fishing and not catching.