Blissful Saturday & Sunday

       On Saturday I went out for a couple hours in the afternoon. I started out in a very small pond where we skate in the winter. The recent "nor'easter" took down a lot of trees--which means the skating is going to be affected next year unless we get it out of There. In the meantime it made a nice casting platform. I didn't catch anything, but I do wonder If the beaver's work had anything to do with the tree toppling!

There was an active hatch going on--midge or perhaps a type of stonefly. There were surface flutterers and skimmers and the phoebes were very active. They are a favourite of mine. With no fish caught after a solid hour in that pond (but I'm sure they are there--I saw a few subtle fin wakes) I moved onto the favoured local stream, but in the TMA portion, the plunging pocket water part of it.

I lost $5 worth of purchased flies. One a green wooly bugger by Sam Boisvert. Another was a beadhead larva I picked up on a trip to the Farmington. So then I went to my own flies and of course that worked:

The recently stocked char was in a spot that I expected would have a fish, and while wading upstream towards it I saw a swirl. I had no luck until I came back down to it from a pool upstream after 20 minutes there.
https://youtu.be/papJ4XOYo9U

While catching the char, I was on top of a rock where the steep side occluded my view of the trout--and vice versa. I started by drifting the wooly bugger on the current out of sight. With no takes I cast downstream and twitched it as I retrieved it upstream, imagining a crayfish darting against the current. The first cast I caught it--but my finger was off the line and the fish was "spooling" my Hardy reel. I lost it and had to cast again. No problem, it took it again and I had it!

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Today (Sunday) I went back there. Of course at first I played for 10 minutes in that same place perched on the rock, knowing I was unlikely to be successful. Now the interesting thing is that as I started to walk up to the next pool, I watched an Osprey drop out of the trees directly onto the pool! No fish for him as he emerged out of the foam, but it proved what I had concluded yesterday: that pool should hold fish.

I then went upstream trying plunges and miniature waterfalls and eddies with foam. There were no takers until I got to a sort of perfect little beach with a promising pool across and down, and a perfect small riffle upstream with a seam leading out. Sure enough, after working the downstream pool, I focused more upstream and in less than 10 casts I had a gorgeous small holdover rainbow.

The really fun part is that I tied a new fly just before heading out--and this is the one that did the trick!

I was as content as I could possibly be. I'd been fishing a perfect small stream, nice burbling clear clean water, phoebes in the trees, and promising riffles with the chance of a trout. I felt like I did fishing with my father in that perfect stream in the Poconos. That this is 2 miles from my house is almost too good to be true. But it is true, which is extraordinary. Until 2016 I had lived in this town for almost 10 years. I had ridden my bike up the road that criss-crosses the stream and thought about what an idyllic scene it was, that I should cast to the riffle there. I had spent my time playing with the children--sailing mostly, or riding, skating on the pond, careening down wooded hills on skinny skis, or going to hockey games or concerts.Yes, I had intended all along to inculcate them in the ways of the trout. I had taken them to Chatfield and Rogers a few times when they were probably too young. But I live a busy life. I live a life of repeated recurring serial obsessions: ice hockey, sailing, skiing, rowing, fishing. There is so much to do when you live on the coast of Connecticut, if you do not squander it.

So what about the melancholy of realizing how many years I thought about doing this on this very stream, but did not--that feeling, what do I do about it?  I go fishing and all is well again.