A Day of Walking the Rod

The misses had decided to take the kids to the mall today, giving me a pass for a few hours. It had been misty and drizzly since last night, but with the air temp in the 60's, this was not an opportunity that I wanted to miss. I quickly loaded up the 2wt and out the door I went.


I pulled into the parking area and, for some reason to my surprise, saw a complete blowout. Either pin-pricks of precipitation added up to a lot more than I had anticipated or it rained a lot harder than I thought while I slumbered, but the stream was a wash.

It had stopped raining some time before, and figured that even with the overcast the day was too nice to waste doing something productive. I geared up and much to my surprise I found my two missing fly boxes stuffed into a pocket of my rain jacket.  Considering these two boxes had held 90% of my nymphs, I was happy indeed!

To get to the better fishing waters, you have to cross the stream. You can cross the stream by either wading (and I didn't bring my waders) or by crossing two cables that someone at sometime strung between two trees. I chose the latter.

Crossing wet steel cables was probably not the smartest of options, but slow and steady eventually won the race and I found myself across.

I took a short walk to the nearest hole that I thought might hold some fish. It's a pretty deep pool and, despite the increase in current, thought that their might be one or two handing deep down near the head. Boy was I wrong.

In the pic above, the water in the middle of the shot is wear I usually stand on the bank. Water was a little high today. After 10-15 minutes of pulling out nothing but twigs and leaves, I move on, confidence slowly sinking. 

I stop at a few places where the current was sluggish and cast along the banks(as the current is even slower along the banks) but still no luck. Resigning myself for a day of "walking the rod" I moved on. 

I continued to cast along the banks in the slower sections, as well the back currents along the bank, but lady luck must have abandoned me. Either there wasn't room to get a decent cast, or on each cast I was pulling leaves out of the waters. While some of the leaves put up a heck of a fight in the current; they weren't the sport I had been hoping for.

So finally I got to the next set of cable bridges and knowing when enough was enough, I turned back. The rain started to pick up while I walked back. Perfect duck weather. Shame I was after some fish.