I had two goals on the river that day. First, catch trout. Nothing new there. Second, scout a place to take my five year old son fly fishing. My first objective influenced the second. Thus, I drove the shortest distance possible to a Colorado trout stream and sought a shallow stretch of water that would be close to the truck and fish well.
“Why don’t you write Jas?”
Just when I think I have something figured out, the river shows me how much I still have to learn.
Stop. Wait. There’s a fish there. You see him?
Getting skunked. It happens. But it’s not about catching fish, right? It’s about wading through a beautiful trout stream. The stillness of being alone with your own thoughts in nature. The rhythms of casting and mending line. Spending time with the people you care about. Are these not the special reasons we go fly fishing? Sure they are… but I still want to catch fish.
To me, the riffles are every bit as exciting as any other part of the river. I think of the riffles as connections between sections on the river. You cannot catch fish if you are not fishing as you move from section to section.
It was not the first time I had found myself in this situation on the river, and it would not be the last.