A Winter Thaw

[WestCentralFisher]

The snow on the hillside walking down the towards the creek was undeniably pretty, but I thought to myself that I would be ok if it was the last I saw until about December. In fact, the more or less constant snow was the primary reason this was my first fishing trip in a few weeks, not counting the little pond down the road that receives a few hundred rainbow trout each winter. 

When I got there, the creek was as inviting as ever. It was crystal clear, with the usual bright-green vegetation of a spring creek, and just under the surface and invisible as of now, a bunch of little wild rainbow trout. 

My buddy would correct me and say self-sustaining, given that their ancestors rode in either on a train or in the back of a truck instead of getting here by themselves, but on the banks of a trout stream after weeks of snow and ice, that wasn't a nit I was going to pick. 

I have fished this creek perhaps 40-50 times, and used to know every riffle and pool to the exact depth I needed to set my strike indicator. That was about 5 years and two moves across various state lines in the past. As a cursory trip in the summer with a spinning rod and few results indicated, I was going to have to relearn it. 

This time, I rigged up my little 3 weight with a #18 hare's ear nymph. Significant rust aside, I was finding my old spots mostly still there, getting the fly where it needed to go, and...nothing. At these times, there's always the temptation to say the stream is no good anymore, but that was clearly untrue. I could see the flits of feeding trout everywhere they should be. I just wasn't catching them. 

Then I switched to a #18 Pheasant Tail, basically the exact same thing except brown instead of gray. And the same little trout that steadfastly ignored the Hare's Ear hammered them. It's easy to forget how important the little things like that are. I've caught 100s of trout on both fly patterns from this creek in the past, and usually it didn't matter which you went with. But on this day, it was the whole ball-game. Randomness like this is what keeps you on your toes. 

Each fish was small, but had such variation in color scheme that at a certain point, I was mostly just fishing to see what the next one would look like. 

After several hours of this, tired and well-satisfied, I began the long walk back up the hill. My waders had done a poor job holding out water, my legs were sore, and doing the hike out in my waders instead of changing out of them was a strategic error. But my old creek still fished pretty much how I remembered it, and that was enough to make the drive home through the now almost snow-free world a happy one. 

[Foghorn]

Great colors on that fish. Wow!

[BilletHead]

Great report! Thanks for sharing, sir.