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Back to Basics
Posted by philip on October 13, 2007It’s easy to do. To get caught up in the technical aspect of fly-fishing. There are so many products out there, so many aquatic insects, so many different types of streams and so much equipment. It’s easy for a person to forget the the basic wonder of fly-fishing.
I think it’s the time we have on the water. Most of us are caught up in our careers, or our life off the stream in general. We look for any angle we can to improve our catch totals or to help ensure we catch fish in the limited precious time we have on the stream. We get lured into buying that $700 rod because we think it will help us catch fish, thus ensuring our morning time on the stream will result in a fish slaying adventure.
Sure, it’s about catching fish, but don’t get so focused on catching fish that you forget to enjoy the scenery, or enjoy the fact that you’re standing waste deep in a roaring river, and not sitting in your chair at the office, or breaking your back at the factory. Don’t forget that people have been catching fish since the dawn of time, and that Orvis was just founded recently relative to that amount of time.
I’ve been focusing on enjoying my time out, keeping my fishing gear simple and still catching fish, though catching fish is really just an extra for me. This held true on a recent trip (the photo below actually) where my fishing partner Rusty Foreman and I fished a popular eastern tailwater. We got there early on Saturday and fished through the am and into noon with one fish between the two of us. Something was obviously wrong. We were fishing water we’d had success on in weeks prior, and fishing flies we knew were working on the river.
The key for me was not getting too caught up in the fact that we weren’t catching fish, and to just enjoy being where I was versus where I typically am. We walked out in the mid day and started talking to others on the river. We soon discovered that nobody was catching fish. One group of eight guys had one fish in four days of fishing! We fished the evening, and picked up one more fish between the two of us. We hit the river hard at daybreak the next morning, and managed one each before the river was bumped to unwadable conditions, and the fish shut down.
What caused the no-bite conditions is a mystery still. Monday at work, I scoured the interent in search of an answer. My journey led me through moon phase charts, barometric pressure theories and river temperature thoughts. In all of that reading, I came away with the feeling that people tend to read far too much into this. The truth is that the fish we seek are complicated creatures. I know from keeping thirteen aquariums in my home and dozens of fish that they are complex animals with needs and wants that we can only guess at.
Rusty fished on Thursday this week in our “home waters”, under conditions that my research had pointed to as “unfavorable conditions”, though my instincts told me that the conditions were perfect based on past days on the stream under those conditions, and he made a killing. Managing a 22″ + bow and landing close to 20. Proving that the moon phase, and barometer aren’t sure fire ways to know the fishs’ tendancies.
Just enjoy your time on the water. Even if you’re skunked. We never know what tomorrow brings, or for some of us, even the next time we’ll fish, so take every moment for what it is, and if a fish blesses you with a strike, then great.
Philip Light
