I caught a small splash to my left just under the Willow branches. Not so much a splash as a disruption of the flowing water. I stood in the middle of the river and watched the spot. A minute later, there it was again, like someone throwing a tiny pebble this time. A couple feet downstream from it, there was another. I couldn’t see the fish, but they were rising to something on the surface, feeling safe under the Willow leaves, sheltered. Or maybe they were taking some insect that was falling from the leaves. I couldn’t tell, but they were there. And it was almost a regular pattern. I thought carefully before making my first cast, not wanting to send the spinner into the long, drooping branches to be fatally tangled and lost, scarring the fish away in the process.
I made a cast that landed just short of the leaves and let it sink for about 2 seconds. I wanted it to drift downstream a couple feet, but I didn’t want it to have enough time to drop to the bottom and end up snagged in the green carpet of underwater flora either. It was a tough situation. Nothing. I tried again, landing the spinner a foot closer to the rising fish. Nothing. I made my next cast downstream of it so that I could retrieve it over the rising fish as I reeled upstream. Nothing. The fish continued to rise, and they continued to ignore my efforts. I had nothing but a couple spinners, and they were being very selective, taking something I couldn’t see either right on the surface or just below it. After about twenty minutes of this, I hooked the spinner in the hook keeper and waded back down stream. Back to the hotel.
I was sure they were Trout, I was sure they were taking some kind of insect, and I was sure that all the times I had heard fishermen say “When they’re on a specific bug, they won’t go for anything else”, that this was one of those times. I was sure that had a fly fisherman been in that situation instead of me, he would have had a Trout or two on the end of his line. And for the first time, I was fairly sure that just maybe I should look into the whole Fly fishing thing.
Fish or Die! 